France and Germany meanwhile joined Russia in pressing for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
to go to Baghdad to try to resolve the crisis. The United States threatened to hit Iraq repeatedly if
needed.

Amer Hammoudi al-Saadi, an adviser to President Saddam Hussein, challenged Richard Butler, the
chairman of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with scrapping Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction, for saying U.N. inspectors had found prohibited weapons wherever they were
allowed in Iraq.

"The facts are that Iraq declared those weapons, Iraq presented them to UNSCOM and Iraq
destroyed them under UNSCOM supervision," Saadi told a news conference in Iraq's capital.

He said that Iraq and UNSCOM had since 1994 put into place an elaborate monitoring system of
Iraq's dual-use facilities, and its exports and imports, which was functioning perfectly.

"If I were in his (Butler's) place, I would be concerned that military action would actually disrupt all
this and result in losing track of what's going on," he said.

"It seems that what the United States and Britain are doing is undermining the work of UNSCOM
without the chairman of UNSCOM being aware of the extent of this," Saadi added.

The United States, backed by Britain, has threatened to attack Iraq unless Baghdad gives
UNSCOM full, unfettered and unlimited access to any location that it wants to inspect.

Saadi said any attack on Iraq was likely to prompt UNSCOM to withdraw its staff and "practically
destroy" the monitoring system, with its cameras, communications and other equipment.

UNSCOM's task since the 1991 Gulf War is to find and destroy Iraq's chemical and biological
weapons, along with its long-range missiles and launchers, and ensure it cannot make any more of
them.

Asked about a U.N. technical team sent to map eight so-called presidential sites that Iraq will only
allow limited access to, Saadi said: "I believe there is constructive work going on."

He said the team already had aerial maps of the sites. The group is supposed to define exactly where
the sites are in an apparent effort to avoid disputes over them in the future.

"They just need to designate the actual boundaries and locate and identify the structures within those
boundaries that are considered presidential sites," Saadi said.

Iraq says it wants a peaceful end to the crisis over access to the disputed sites and says it is ready to
open them to U.N. inspections under certain conditions for a 60-day period.

Saadi accused Butler, an Australian diplomat, of "just acting like a U.S. or British politician, just
exerting maximum pressure and provoking things and beating the drums of war."

The U.N. technical team of two Austrian surveyors, led by a Swedish U.N. official, Staffan de
Mistura, held talks with Oil Minister Amir Muhammad Rasheed and Foreign Ministry Under
Secretary Riyadh al-Qaysi.

Rasheed earlier denied Iraq had any prohibited weapons, saying these had been destroyed under
UNSCOM supervision.

But the director of a U.S. congressional task force charged Iraq smuggled deadly weapons
programs to sympathetic Arab states for safekeeping along with up to 400 Scud missiles that could
deliver germ or chemical agents.

Yossef Bodansky, director of the House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare, said Iraq had also retained production capabilities for weapons of mass
destruction through joint programs in Sudan and Libya.

About 400 surviving Iraqi Scud missiles of a type that could be used to deliver such weapons were
shipped to Sudan and Yemen after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Bodansky said.

He said his information, which was first published in a Feb. 10 task force report, came from Arab
opposition movements and British, German and Israeli intelligence sources.

"This is absolute nonsense. None of this has happened," responded Saddam adviser Saadi at the
Baghdad news conference.

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen said "whether the report is accurate or not, it does in fact, I
think, just by surfacing, give some validity to what we have been trying to accomplish" -- getting full
access to suspected weapons sites.

U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said Sunday that the United States would strike Iraq
militarily time and again if necessary to deny Saddam his deadliest weapons.

"We will do what we can at this point as far as diminishing his capacity" to build weapons of mass
destruction, he said of the looming round of possible U.S. and British air attacks.

"But we would make it clear that if we have evidence he is rebuilding (after the possible next
U.S.-led strike), we would act again," Berger added on the NBC program "Meet the Press."

Berger, President Bill Clinton's top national security aide, suggested military action may still be at
least a week away in the absence of full Iraqi cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors.

"I would say it's not measured in days but it's also not measured in months," he said.

The United States Sunday sent six more F-117A stealth bombers to an unnamed destination near
the Gulf as part of its military build-up. The bombers left from a base in New Mexico.

At the presidential retreat at Camp David, Clinton took to the telephones again to drum up
international support for the U.S. position.

Clinton spoke by telephone to the leaders of Kuwait, Bahrain, Belgium and Austria, White House
spokesman P.J. Crowley said. But he declined to characterize the responses. "I would assume that
those four governments were supportive, but I leave it for them to describe in what fashion,"
Crowley said.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said U.N. Security Council members were
searching for consensus on a framework for talks between Annan and Iraq's government should the
U.N. chief visit Baghdad to try to solve the dispute.

"The five permanent members must agree among themselves on defining a framework, but it must not
lock him into an overly detailed mandate," Vedrine told Radio J.

In Bonn, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said Annan should visit Baghdad. Kinkel said that
"every, really every" option should be explored to reach a peaceful resolution.

But at the United Nations, diplomats and U.N. sources said Annan had not yet received U.S.
support for such a mission.

Washington would not oppose a visit but has not signed on to any diplomatic package Annan could
take with him. Without full Security Council support the secretary-general has said he would not go.

Annan meets again Monday with the five permanent council members: the United States, Britain,
France, Russia and China.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cautioned Iraq Sunday against repeating its 1991 Gulf
War missile attacks on Israel, but declined to say whether he would retaliate if Scuds hit the Jewish
state.

Asked on CNN what he would do if Saddam launched missiles at Israel, Netanyahu said: "First of
all, I hope he doesn't fire. If he fires a missile or missiles into Israel, I think that would be highly
ill-advised on his part."

Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the Gulf War.