The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz has denied that prisoners have been used in experiments as part of the country's biological weapons programme.

Tariq Aziz: "fabrication of US and British intelligence services" (3' 26")

Speaking at a news conference in Baghdad Mr Aziz said: "That is one of the lies being used as a pretext for intruding into the headquarters and branches of the Iraqi security agencies."

Mr Aziz went on to accuse the US and Britain of manipulating the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with disarming Iraq and condemned the situation as "unacceptable."

"The team is almost wholly Anglo-Saxon, this is not acceptable, it is scandalous," said Mr Aziz.

"The fact that they send such a team shows the complete domination of the US and the British. This biased policy should change."

Mr Aziz said teams should be made up of more nationalities.

Scott Ritter: accused by Iraq of being a spy

The Iraqi body charged with liaising with UNSCOM on Wednesday refused to cooperate with US weapons inspector Scott Ritter for the second day running, accusing him of being a spy for Washington.

It is Mr Ritter who has alleged that Iraq has tested chemical weapons on prisoners.

The UN Security Council has issued a statement demanding Iraq cooperate fully, immediately and without conditions with the UN's weapons inspectors.

Divisions

The statement contains no threats and according to the BBC's UN Correspondent in New York conceals the private divisions among the Council's big powers.

Despite their support for the statement Russia, France and China all sympathise to some extent with Iraq's demands that the weapons teams be more balanced.

But in a thinly-veiled warning to those countries, Britain's ambassador to the UN, Sir John Weston, said they should not fall for Iraqi propaganda.

"This is not a moment for individual members of the council to allow themselves to be manipulated by the puppet master in Baghdad.

"It is a moment when the credibility of the United Nations is on the line and we have to measure up to those responsibilities as we have usually done in the past."

Earlier, the Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Nizar Hamdoun, said in a letter to the UN Security Council chairman that Mr Ritter had visited a prison on Monday in a bid to substantiate the claims.

Mr Hamdoun said Iraq categorically denied "these allegations which have been circulated by American and British parties to deceive the Security Council."

The UN has confirmed that a team of inspectors found no trace of suspected documents that might have revealed testing of biological agents on prisoners.

The UN's chief weapons inspector, Richard Butler, said when the UN team looked for documents covering 1994 to 1995 at a site on Monday nothing was found.

He said that other documents were found in the office but none for those years.

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