Iraq says it has accepted the terms of the new UN Security Council resolution calling on the country to disarm. This move apparently clears the way for the return of weapons inspectors.

The move appears to clear the way for UN inspectors to return to Iraq on Monday after a four-year absence, backed by threats of military action from the United States and Britain.

The inspections team, will be headed by the chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix.

The UN resolution lays out firm ground rules for inspections, allowing inspectors to look for evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programmes anywhere and at any time.

Do you think the weapons inspectors will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Do you think Iraq has averted war by accepting the UN resolution? What do you think will happen if weapons inspectors do not find nuclear or biological weapons?

We put your questions for former UN weapons Inspector Olivia Bosch; the BBC's Security Correspondent Frank Gardner and the BBC's Correspondent in Baghdad, Caroline Hawley in a live forum on 14 November.

Transcript

David Shukman:
Welcome to this BBC Interactive forum. I'm David Shukman.

Iraq says it accepts the new UN Security Council resolution ordering the country to disarm. But the US warns Iraq not to obstruct UN weapons inspectors due to return next week.

The warning came after Baghdad indicated it may challenge parts of the resolution which was approved unanimously. So where do we go from here? Joining us to answer your questions is Caroline Hawley in Baghdad and here in our London studio, BBC Security correspondent, Frank Gardner and former UN Arms Inspector, Olivia Bosch.

Let's go straight to Baghdad for our first question from John Burns, Aurors Illinois, USA: Now that Iraq has accepted the new UN resolution, will Iraq stop aggressive actions in regards to UN mandated no fly-zone pilots and will Iraq stop supporting terrorists?

Caroline Hawley:
Well as far as I know and this is certainly Iraq's position, there is no specific UN mandate for the no-fly zones - they are enforced by only American and British planes. Certainly Iraq sees them as a violation of its sovereignty and has been trying to shoot down those planes without any success. I would imagine that at the moment it would try to avoid what would be deemed as provocative acts by the Americans and the British. So I would imagine that we won't see any "upping of the anti" by Iraq on that.

On the question of terrorists, or course Iraq insists that it does not support terrorists - that it has no links with al-Qaeda - that it has an entirely different ideological underpinning to al-Qaeda.

David Shukman:
A lot of the questions have come in to do with inspections. The first from Mey Punlok, Cambodia: How long will the inspections last? Can this resolution prevent war on Iraq?

Khalid Aziz, Saudi Arabia: It is widely acknowledged that 10 years of sanctions have hit the people of Iraq. Do you really think there are still sites in Iraq housing or producing weapons of "mass destruction"?

Dan, Indianapolis, IN, USA: Considering the manner in which Iraq "managed" the last term of weapons inspections, is there much hope that inspectors will be allowed to conduct affairs unimpeded?

Caroline Hawley:
The UN inspectors now have 60 days to report back after a 30 day period in which Iraq has to basically come clean about what it has. Now it says it's got nothing to hide - it's got nothing to show because it hasn't been hiding anything.

But for Iraq one of the main problems about this resolution is that there is no time limit on the end to the inspections and Iraqis have always they want a light at the end of the tunnel if they cooperate. Specifically of course they want to know that if they cooperate there would be a lifting of sanction.

Now if they do fully cooperate, will it prevent war? I think the sense in Iraq is that resolution is impossible to fully implement - that by accepting Iraq has only bought itself some time. One MP here called the resolution a minefield for Iraq without a map and said it essentially amounted to an occupation.

But it's really impossible, certainly for me, to say whether Iraq is still producing weapons of mass destruction. I can only say that Iraq says that is absolutely not the case. That it no longer has any chemical or biological weapons - that it hasn't been able to produce nuclear weapons.

So the issue now is what will the inspectors, if anything, find when they are back here on the ground. And I must say as well that diplomats here say they really don't know whether Iraq has been trying to develop weapons of mass destruction.

David Shukman:
Boris, Atlanta, USA: Do you think Saddam will make an effort to befriend Bush and stay on as a leader or the newly-"democratic" all-Arab world?

Caroline Hawley:
I'm not sure the question is entirely serious. I think Saddam Hussein wants to stay in power - that is clear. I think he knew that if he didn't accept this resolution then he would face an American-led attack knowing that the Americans want to bring an end to his regime. So I think he felt that he had no choice but to accept. The stakes are very, very high for the regime and they know that if they don't comply then really this regime faces being wiped away.

But the Iraqis are also saying that it's up now for the UN to behave professionally. They remember of course that the chief UN weapons inspector before back in 1988, Scott Ritter, admitted to spying for the Americans.

David Shukman:
Caroline for the moment we'll leave it there. But let's stay with the topic of inspections. Olivia Bosch, you were on an inspection mission yourself. A question for you from S'celo, Durban, South Africa: Who is going to be part of the inspection team?

Olivia Bosch:
As before, the inspectors come from 17 to more that 20 countries. Previously there was a perception that these were merely Americans and British who where on the teams but the reality was that they came from many countries and the same would be again as well this time around. As in the past there have been Arab inspectors as well.

David Shukman:
Per, Asker, Norway: In your opinion, is the Iraqi statement that they have no weapons of mass destruction, true or false?

We've obviously assessments from the British and American governments that Iraq does have these weapons. You've been there what do you think?

Olivia Bosch:
I think it's important that we go back again to the Resolution 687 in 1991 that was requested from the Iraqis is a declaration and disclosure of their programmes of weapons of mass destructions. And the programme refers to people, to facilities, to locations, stocks, capabilities, weapons if they are there, component parts. So it may be that they may have component parts. In fact when inspectors go back they would be interested to know what has happened to some of the items that have been unaccounted for in the past.

There may be a little bit of pedantry here when there may be no weapons. i.e. if you're thinking of the "smoking gun", it's quite possible there's no "smoking gun". But the inspectors will want to verify that when the Iraqis make the declaration of their various facilities that these areas have been declared, whether or not they are involved with weapons of mass destruction programmes.

David Shukman:
So it's going to perhaps quite a blurred situation when it comes to decision making. We have a question from Saleh Juma, Zanzibar Tanzania: What criteria will arms inspectors use to consider Iraq as having dangerous weapons?

And a further question from Ignace Cloquet, Meeffe, Belgium: As an inspector for the UN you know that in case you find compromising information or material, this can cause a new war. I imagine this put a lot of pressure on you.

Olivia Bosch:
Well actually those questions are perhaps not so difficult because Hans Blix has already stated that when they do go in they will be adopting a technical approach. They will looking at the facts, they will be looking at items, stockpiles and of course they'll want to speak to many of the scientists and engineers who have been involved with past programmes. There are several hundred scientists who the inspectors would like to interview which provides and opportunity to get a better idea.

So here's the opportunity, as Hans Blix, has said, for the Iraqis to put down on the table - well here is the missing part of the biological weapons programme we didn't show you before. Here's an opportunity to fill in those missing pieces.

David Shukman:
As a final question to Caroline Hawley in Baghdad. An Anonymous e-mail asks: Is Saddam now playing a game that all Arab dictators play: my parliament and my people are not with you but I am and therefore I am your only chance?

Caroline Hawley:
I think that the reason why Saddam Hussein accepted this resolution is because he knew it was his only chance to avoid an American-led war. That even though the rhetoric of the Americans has changed recently and has been toned down from the calls for regime change, he knows or he certainly believes that the Americans are bent on bringing him down. I think that's really why he has accepted now.

But I think what happened in parliament earlier this week was very, very interesting. I don't think people here had been expecting such a outright rejection of the UN resolution. We'd expected people to get up and rant and rail against the resolution and make clear their very serious objections and reservations to it. But it was interesting they came out with such a outright rejection and then Uday Hussein, Saddam Hussein's son, intervened and then despite that we had this vote. It was unexpected drama in the Iraqi parliament.

David Shukman:
Caroline thanks very much indeed. Let me put a question now to Frank Gardner from Trungtoet, HCM City, Vietnam: What are reactions of some the big countries such as Russia, China, the US, UK, France, to this Iraqi acceptance of the resolution?

Frank Gardner:
Collectively the countries that you mentioned there - the UN Security Council permanent members - they're all relieved because we've got through the first hurdle here. The first worry was that if Iraq was going to reject the resolution then it would be very hard to avoid the build-up to war very quickly. But I don't think anybody is fooling themselves that we're out of the woods yet.

Britain and the United States in particular are extremely distrustful of the Iraqi government - of Saddam's Hussein's promises. And I think particularly in the United States, there is a feeling that only continual pressure of force - and that means the build-up of troops in the region - will actually convince him that he has got to comply. I think there are many people in Washington who are expecting him to put an obstruction in the way of the inspectors fairly early on and that's why they'd like to see troops brought into the region very quickly.

David Shukman:
While we've been talking Christopher Rokes from Lima in Peru asks: What will happen if the weapons are found? Is there a political solution to this problem?

Frank Gardner:
The Americans would say that if Iraq declares that it has no weapons and it's then found to have them, that it is in breach of UN Security Council resolutions and that is in itself a pretext to go to war.

I think that it would be very hard for America to do that without first going back to the UN Security Council. I think that's the first thing that would happen is that the UN weapons inspectors would have to go back and report back to the Security Council and say well actually, despite the declarations by the Iraqi government, we have found weapons.

I don't think it will come as a great surprise to people if they do find them. But the grey area here is going to be that under the new mandate the weapons inspectors are going to be allowed, in theory, to take certain members of the Iraqi military industrial infrastructure out of Iraq and question them out of Iraq where they can't be pressurised. Now they may say some things which may be hard to prove and it may be by word of mouth and that I think is going to be a very awkward grey area.

Olivia Bosch:
I'd like to add something here. It's important to note that in the resolution this is at the discretion of Hans Blix and it may be that while it's written down on the piece of paper it's unlikely that that might be exercised certainly not on any large scale. It's important to have a verified process.

David Shukman:
Simon, England: Hans Blix seems now to own the trigger on the whole war. Where do his allegiances lie - the UN, the US or to Europe?

Olivia Bosch:
I think clearly this is for the UN. He is there on behalf of the UN to make sure that the UN resolution works in the best way and we've heard recently Russia and France certainly would like the UN process to be seen to be working. They have, as in the past, no interest, in seeing conflict start. So they are, as they did recently, urging the Iraqi regime to please comply, this is the way to avert conflict.

David Shukman:
Jussi Salmi, Turku, Finland: What kind of influence does the USA have on the inspectors and their reports to the Security Council?

Olivia Bosch:
Hans Blix, the head of the UNMOVIC team, is very determined to make sure that this is done in a very professional way. There is not to be seen that there's an American predominance. Again this was part of the media hype the last time around - there were inspectors from all different countries and the same is the case this time.

David Shukman:
Keith Hutchinson, Dallas, USA: What happens if the inspectors find evidence of weapons in Iraq and Saddam, knowing war can not be avoided, decides to arrest hundreds of unarmed inspectors as "spies" in order to use them as human shields?

We saw a similar tactic 10 years ago.

Frank Gardner:
We did and I think it's important to point out here that the UN inspection regime has changed - the Iraqi regime has not. UNSCOM, which was widely accused of having an intelligence gathering agenda which was being passed on to Israel and to the US - I'm sure some would deny that but that's what it was accused of - that has now given way to a completely different regime - UNMOVIC - and the American influence is not nearly as big on UNMOVIC as it was.

Having said that, I think, the inspectors know when they go in that they are taking a risk particularly if they're going to get caught up in a conflict. It's a risk not only for the UN inspectors but also for aid workers and journalists who are going there.

Saddam Hussein, I think, will do everything he can at this stage to appear to cooperate. I don't think he wants a war. Certainly I don't think the Iraqi people want a war although many of them are resigned to it. But if war appears absolutely inevitable, then his reactions are unpredictable. Nobody predicted him attacking Iran in 1980, nobody predicted him attacking Kuwait in 1991. He could do anything he could to stay in power and when he thinks he's lost that, he's quite capable of taking several people down with him.

David Shukman:
Clearly the carrot in the whole process for him is the lifting of sanctions if he plays this by the book. Saeed, Sulaymaniyyah, Kurdistan, Iraq: Did it ever bother your conscious, Olivia, the impact of the length of your inspection prolonged the suffering of the Iraqi people?

Olivia Bosch:
When the inspectors went in, in 1991, there was an expectation that the Iraqis would comply with their obligations as in Resolution 687. And in fact what emerged was the elaborate concealment and deception plan that led the inspectors to stay much longer than they had originally anticipated. So actually when the Iraqi regime complies to the obligations under 687 and he disarms fully, accounts are made to the Security Council, you have as put out in Resolution 1284, the steps have been put into place for the suspension, and when disarmament occurs, lifting of sanctions.

There's also, importantly, that there's in place an on site monitoring process. So what we'll see even now is the placement of cameras and also the inspectors will want to check on user certificates to see when items are imported. This is all part of a pre-established, reaffirmed yet again in this resolution, of what happens to assure that there is not a reconstitution. In fact, one of the British ambassadors to the UN said two days before this resolution was passed, that it may be years that the on site monitoring process is in place - whether the current regime, or another regime is in place.

Also, we've heard even the United States say recently that regime change does not mean change in person but it could be a change in their behaviour. So as Hans Blix has said this is an opportunity - to paraphrase his words - for Iraq to emerge out of a dark period in their history.

David Shukman:
Tim Wood, Shrewsbury, UK: Is it possible for Saddam to have moved any of his weapons of mass destruction outside Iraq without being detected?

A similar theme from Supreeta Sampath, Chennai, India: Don't you think the time taken by Iraq to allow inspectors back was sufficient enough to cover their tracks?

Olivia Bosch:
These are all valid questions. Certainly the opportunity was there that if the Iraq regime wanted to move things they could - certainly the inspection regime will be expecting that. They will be going in knowing that and obviously if things are buried deeply, I suppose it's quite safe way down underground. But at some point everything comes to the surface so there are ways to find these things.

David Shukman:
An e-mail that's just come in from Jan Dansiga, Trieste, Italy: Will Iraq suffer any consequences if Saddam's claim not to have any weapons of mass destruction is found to be untrue?

Frank Gardner:
Yes, I think he will most definitely. If that happens after Iraq has made what is supposed to be its full and final declaration of what it has got and if it says it hasn't got anything and its then found to be lying, then the Americans would say that is pretext enough to go to war.

As I said earlier, I think they'd still take it back to the UN Security Council but the hawks in Washington would say - look this proves once and for all that this whole UN inspections is a sham and that the only way to purge Iraq of weapons of mass destruction is to change the regime altogether and that may have to be by force - that's what the hawks in Washington would say.

I think they'd be a lot of resistance to that by the French and the Russians and that's where US diplomacy comes in. That they would have to try and swing them round in the way that they have done behind this recent resolution which was, I must say, a surprising turnaround in US diplomacy from a point at which the world seemed to be against Washington's view on Iraq - the world seems to have, at least temporarily - perhaps not the Arab world but the rest of it - to have swung round to supporting Washington.

David Shukman:
So in the weeks ahead so much rides on the inspectors and how that all plays out. A question for you Olivia from Inna Tysoe, Davis, California, USA: Can the UN inspectors be any more successful at ensuring that "dual use" facilities that can make medicine and biological weapons make only medicines?

Olivia Bosch:
That's actually a very important question because there are many viable commercial and academic concerns where research is allowed and already there are in place - the industrial processes and facilities - and of course these are also the areas that have been monitored previously.

In fact when Hans Blix met with the technical team of Iraq in Vienna on the 30th September and 1st October, the Iraqis did hand over four computer discs with the backlog of monitoring activity, which was a requirement for their on-going monitoring process. This was monitoring activity of actions and procedures that were going on in many of these dual use facilities. So those will be perhaps near the top of the kinds of places where the inspectors do go back to assess to see that in fact medicines are being made.

As important to that also will be the inspectors wanting to interview scientists who may have worked there in the past or who work there now. So it's very important that with the interviews that do take place that the hundreds of scientists that the inspectors will want to see and speak to will be an important contribution to assessing the validity of the Iraqi declaration.

David Shukman:
Alielle, Los Angeles, USA: Do you think Iraq is simply buying all the time it can in order to polish war plans and to wait for the antidotes to nerve gases to arrive, which they've tried to buy from manufacturers in Turkey?

Frank Gardner:
Yes, there were reports that Iraq was trying to buy one and a quarter million doses of Atropine, which is an antidote to nerve agent. I don't know if that is true or that Iraq is trying to necessarily buy time to arm itself against nerve gases. The conspiracy theory is that this proves that Iraq is going to inoculate its own troops and then release nerve gas on an invading army. I've no idea if that's true or not.

I do think though that the Iraqi strategy in all of this is to string it out for as long as possible and that's why they were so uncomfortable with this very rigid timetable that's been set out with all these triggers, such as December 8th and then in February when these various things have to be complied with.

They would like all of this to go away. They don't want the inspectors back. I interviewed Naji Sabri, the Foreign Minister, pretty much exactly a year ago in Qatar at one of the Islamic foreign ministers meetings, and he said, I can tell you we've taken a decision in Baghdad - we will never ever allow the inspectors back in - you can have that from me, I've got that on tape somewhere.

Now of course faced with the threat of force that policy has been reversed, although the inspectors have yet to set foot there. But I think Iraq is hoping that there will be a certain amount of confusion in all of this and it will be able to string things out in such a way that does not seem to be obstructing - not enough to actually cause the wrath of the US military to come down on them - but enough to make it really pretty difficult for these inspectors to have free reign and as some people put it, a kind of neo-colonial occupation of their country, which is the way many people see it in Iraq.

David Shukman:
Armin, Canada: With the additional 22 palaces he built is it possible he has all the facilities in these places and not searched by the inspectors?

Olivia Bosch:
It's a task and I think the inspectors may have other priorities before going to the presidential palaces. The palaces issue has somewhat been journalistically appealing but also of importance and significance to the Iraqi sovereignty issues.

I think there would be a calculation on the part of the Iraqis that if they did hide weapons of mass destruction - components or parts - in their palaces that they're also be aware that the palaces may actually be a military target and one doesn't need rocket science to know where the palaces are. So he would risk losing his weapons of mass destruction component parts if he hid them in a palace which would be subject to military attack.

David Shukman:
Felix Pahl, Berlin, Germany: Why are not more inspectors speaking out like Scott Ritter about this abuse and the one-sided view the media are currently giving us of the previous inspections? Have you been pressurized?

Olivia Bosch:
I would like clarification on which part of what Scott Ritter is saying - I've heard various statements from Scott Ritter so I'm not sure which one he's focusing on. The inspectors, when they went in for the first time around, they found a lot of weapons of mass destruction and destroyed them - so that did take place.

But what was left unaccounted for were the programmes. We didn't get a picture of the total programme - the plans, the managerial intentions etc. Now here's an opportunity for the Iraqi regime to comply with their obligations and to provide that total picture of what there programmes were - not just the "smoking guns".

David Shukman:
In case that doesn't happen smoothly, Jane Cunningham writes from Bridgetown, Barbados: Do you believe there's any possibility that the US will not go to war against Iraq whether weapons of mass destruction are discovered or not?

Frank Gardner:
I think it's pretty slim, I must say. These inspections are so intrusive and so much more rigorous than the earlier inspections ended up being that I think it's going to be very difficult for Iraq to actually swallow them. They are, I think it has to be said, a bit of an insult to national pride for many Iraqis. Some people would say that that's justified given their evasion in the past.

But of the course the nightmare for Washington is that the inspectors get to go everywhere, see everything and find nothing and Saddam is still in place because then the US's bluff has been called and they're left there fuming not able to do anything. So there is a slim chance but I have to say most people I've spoken to seem to think that war is inevitable.

David Shukman:
Thank you both very much. That's all we've got time for. Thanks to Caroline Hawley who joined us from Baghdad and Frank Gardner and Olivia Bosch here with me in London. This has been a BBC interactive forum. Goodbye.