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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq, denying it has weapons of mass destruction, delivered to the United Nations (news - web sites) on Saturday its long-awaited declaration detailing its nuclear, chemical and biological programs. President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), meanwhile, apologized to the people of Kuwait for his 1990 invasion.
A vehicle with the Iraqi documents arrived at the U.N. office at the edge of the capital shortly after 8 p.m. The filing of the more than 12,000 pages of technical detail, meeting a U.N. deadline, now shifts the crisis into a new stage, as Washington and Baghdad move step by step toward a crossroads between war and peace.
The declaration "will answer all the questions which have been addressed during the last months and years," Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, who oversaw the declaration's preparation, said earlier.
Amin also said it would name companies and countries that helped Iraq develop weapons of mass destruction in the past, information that could help in prosecutions under other nations' export-control laws.
"I reiterate here Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction," he told reporters. "I think if the United States has the minimum level of fairness and braveness, it should accept the report and say this is the truth."
Saddam said he was not apologizing to the Kuwaitis out of weakness but a desire to set the record straight.
In a speech read on national television by the Iraqi information minister, Saddam outlined the events that led to the invasion and said: "We apologize to God about any act that has angered him in the past and that was held against us, and we apologize to you (the Kuwaitis) on the same basis."
In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Bush (news - web sites) made plain his skepticism about Iraq's weapons inventory. "Thus far we are not seeing the fundamental shift in practice and attitude that the world is demanding," Bush said in remarks taped Friday.
Iraqi officials displayed the declaration — more than 12,000 pages — to the international media before it was handed over to U.N. officials in Baghdad. It will be delivered Sunday to U.N. headquarters in New York and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
On a table in a government office, reporters viewed copies of volumes devoted separately to nuclear, chemical, biological and missile activities, titled "Currently Accurate, Full and Complete Declarations."
The mass of paper, in red and blue covers, was spread on a table accompanied by computer disks, presumably with added information.
Under the Security Council resolution calling for the report, teams from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the U.N. nuclear watchdog resumed inspections Nov. 27 after a four-year interruption.
On Saturday, the inspectors visited two sites south of Baghdad previously inspected in the 1990s — an industrial plant that in the 1980s helped make medium-range missiles now forbidden to Iraq by the United Nations, and a site associated with Iraq's major nuclear research center.
As usual, the U.N. inspection agency offered no immediate information about the visits.
Iraq's report on past weapons programs and industrial activity will take U.N. experts weeks to analyze and inspectors months to verify inside Iraq. And U.N. officials said weeding out data that might help others produce chemical, biological or nuclear weapons will further delay handover of material to the Security Council's 15 member nations.
"No member will get it on Monday," chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told reporters in New York on Friday.
The Bush administration says it's sure Iraq still harbors banned arms, despite its repeated denials — including the one in the declaration. If Iraq doesn't disarm, U.S. officials say, they will seek Security Council sanction for military action against Iraq. Failing that, they say, Washington would initiate an attack.
U.S. officials have not presented conclusive evidence Iraq has banned weapons. The White House said Thursday that "solid evidence" would be turned over to U.N. inspectors.
The United States on Friday offered to protect Iraqi scientists who cooperate with international weapons inspectors searching for hidden arms.
The Security Council resolution under which weapons inspectors are working allows them to solicit information from Iraqi scientists without Iraqi officials being present.
The Security Council resolution adopted Nov. 8 required Iraq to file by Sunday an "accurate, full, and complete declaration" of all weapons programs. Iraq also was required to report on "all other chemical, biological, and nuclear programs," even if not weapon-related.
In the 1990s, after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War (news - web sites), U.N. inspectors destroyed many tons of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and dismantled its program to try to build nuclear bombs. But the monitoring collapsed amid U.N.-Iraqi disputes, and the inspectors suspect they may have missed some chemical and biological weapons.
The inspectors hope the Iraqis at least will help them answer open questions by, for example, supplying convincing documentation on the fate of 550 artillery shells filled with poisonous mustard gas. Iraqi and U.N. accounts contain many such discrepancies from the 1990s.
The U.N. resolution provides that "false statements or omissions" in Iraq's declaration would constitute a "material breach," that is, a potential cause for military action, but only if coupled with Iraqi noncooperation. That would seem to exempt inaccuracies shown to be inadvertent.
If Iraq eventually is found to have cooperated fully with the inspectors, U.N. resolutions call for the Security Council to consider lifting economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
A vehicle with the Iraqi documents arrived at the U.N. office at the edge of the capital shortly after 8 p.m. The filing of the more than 12,000 pages of technical detail, meeting a U.N. deadline, now shifts the crisis into a new stage, as Washington and Baghdad move step by step toward a crossroads between war and peace.
The declaration "will answer all the questions which have been addressed during the last months and years," Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, who oversaw the declaration's preparation, said earlier.
Amin also said it would name companies and countries that helped Iraq develop weapons of mass destruction in the past, information that could help in prosecutions under other nations' export-control laws.
"I reiterate here Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction," he told reporters. "I think if the United States has the minimum level of fairness and braveness, it should accept the report and say this is the truth."
Saddam said he was not apologizing to the Kuwaitis out of weakness but a desire to set the record straight.
In a speech read on national television by the Iraqi information minister, Saddam outlined the events that led to the invasion and said: "We apologize to God about any act that has angered him in the past and that was held against us, and we apologize to you (the Kuwaitis) on the same basis."
In his weekly radio address Saturday, President Bush (news - web sites) made plain his skepticism about Iraq's weapons inventory. "Thus far we are not seeing the fundamental shift in practice and attitude that the world is demanding," Bush said in remarks taped Friday.
Iraqi officials displayed the declaration — more than 12,000 pages — to the international media before it was handed over to U.N. officials in Baghdad. It will be delivered Sunday to U.N. headquarters in New York and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
On a table in a government office, reporters viewed copies of volumes devoted separately to nuclear, chemical, biological and missile activities, titled "Currently Accurate, Full and Complete Declarations."
The mass of paper, in red and blue covers, was spread on a table accompanied by computer disks, presumably with added information.
Under the Security Council resolution calling for the report, teams from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the U.N. nuclear watchdog resumed inspections Nov. 27 after a four-year interruption.
On Saturday, the inspectors visited two sites south of Baghdad previously inspected in the 1990s — an industrial plant that in the 1980s helped make medium-range missiles now forbidden to Iraq by the United Nations, and a site associated with Iraq's major nuclear research center.
As usual, the U.N. inspection agency offered no immediate information about the visits.
Iraq's report on past weapons programs and industrial activity will take U.N. experts weeks to analyze and inspectors months to verify inside Iraq. And U.N. officials said weeding out data that might help others produce chemical, biological or nuclear weapons will further delay handover of material to the Security Council's 15 member nations.
"No member will get it on Monday," chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told reporters in New York on Friday.
The Bush administration says it's sure Iraq still harbors banned arms, despite its repeated denials — including the one in the declaration. If Iraq doesn't disarm, U.S. officials say, they will seek Security Council sanction for military action against Iraq. Failing that, they say, Washington would initiate an attack.
U.S. officials have not presented conclusive evidence Iraq has banned weapons. The White House said Thursday that "solid evidence" would be turned over to U.N. inspectors.
The United States on Friday offered to protect Iraqi scientists who cooperate with international weapons inspectors searching for hidden arms.
The Security Council resolution under which weapons inspectors are working allows them to solicit information from Iraqi scientists without Iraqi officials being present.
The Security Council resolution adopted Nov. 8 required Iraq to file by Sunday an "accurate, full, and complete declaration" of all weapons programs. Iraq also was required to report on "all other chemical, biological, and nuclear programs," even if not weapon-related.
In the 1990s, after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War (news - web sites), U.N. inspectors destroyed many tons of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and dismantled its program to try to build nuclear bombs. But the monitoring collapsed amid U.N.-Iraqi disputes, and the inspectors suspect they may have missed some chemical and biological weapons.
The inspectors hope the Iraqis at least will help them answer open questions by, for example, supplying convincing documentation on the fate of 550 artillery shells filled with poisonous mustard gas. Iraqi and U.N. accounts contain many such discrepancies from the 1990s.
The U.N. resolution provides that "false statements or omissions" in Iraq's declaration would constitute a "material breach," that is, a potential cause for military action, but only if coupled with Iraqi noncooperation. That would seem to exempt inaccuracies shown to be inadvertent.
If Iraq eventually is found to have cooperated fully with the inspectors, U.N. resolutions call for the Security Council to consider lifting economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.
" he says he's sorry"
In the days following the liberation, a news team stubled across Kuwaiti forces torturing people, with US personal present. There were also retributions against those who were seen to be collaborators.
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