Iraq accused the United States of trying to thwart the mission of UN arms inspectors and pave the way for an attack by claiming that Baghdad's firing on its warplanes in "no-fly" zones breaches disarmament Resolution 1441."This is an attempt to shuffle the cards, sabotage the return of the inspectors, and foil their mission so that US lies about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction are not uncovered," the official daily Al-Jumhuriya wrote in a front-page editorial.By turning UN Security Council resolutions on their head, the United States was also seeking to "justify and pave the way for an aggression against Iraq," the paper said Wednesday.

Al-Jumhuriya made the charge as chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei left Baghdad after two days of talks during which they secured an Iraqi promise of full cooperation and "transparency" when arms experts resume inspections next week after a four-year break.

The two men said they had constructive discussions with Iraqi officials, and President Saddam Hussein's adviser General Amer al-Saadi confirmed that Baghdad would meet the crucial December 8 deadline for accounting for its armament programs as stipulated by Resolution 1441.

A prominent political analyst said Iraq's acceptance of Resolution 1441 and the flexibility it had shown during the mission of Blix and ElBaradei had thrown the administration of US President George W. Bush off balance."Iraq's approach to Resolution 1441 and the cooperation it extended to the top weapons inspectors came as a big surprise to Washington," Abdurrazzak al-Dulaimi told AFP.

The Bush administration, which would prefer to see crises between Iraq and the inspectors such as those that marked relations between Baghdad and the former UNSCOM arms commission, had to come up with another ostensible cause for war, said Dulaimi, who heads the media faculty at Baghdad University.

Iraq agreed September 16 to the return of inspectors, four years after UNSCOM experts fled the country ahead of a US-British bombing blitz.But the Bush administration insisted on obtaining a new tough Security Council resolution before the inspectors would be allowed to return.

The resolution warns that non-compliance would expose Iraq to "serious consequences," a euphemism for a US-led war.

Iraq has never recognized the "no-fly" zones enforced by US and British warplanes over its north and south since the end of the 1991 Gulf War without being explicitly sanctioned by any UN resolution.US claims that Iraq was breaching its obligations by firing on coalition aircraft in the zones are "an additional indication of US intentions to use Resolution 1441 as a cover to justify its aggressive actions against Iraq," an Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman said Monday.Bush himself joined the fray on Wednesday, after his defense secretary had rebuked UN chief Kofi Annan for questioning the US interpretation of Resolution 1441.

Speaking in Prague, Bush vowed to take "appropriate action" after Iraqi air defenses opened fire on US and British warplanes in the zones, but he did not say what the US response would be.Annan questioned a claim by the White House that Iraqi anti-aircraft fire directed at coalition warplanes in the zones constituted a "material breach" of Resolution 1441.

"Let me say I don't think the Security Council will say that this is in contravention of the resolution," he said while visiting a village in the southern Yugoslav province of Kosovo."I don't know that he (Annan) necessarily reflects the UN," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld retorted. "The center of gravity is the Security Council."

PHOTO CAPTION

A US warplane patrols a "no-fly" zone over northern Iraq