Chemical weapons experts trekked into the Iraqi desert Wednesday to destroy their first batch of prohibited Iraqi arms under the new U.N. inspections regime, 10 leftover artillery shells filled with burning, disabling mustard gas. Working with an Iraqi team, the U.N. specialists will take four or five days to eliminate the 155mm munitions at the al-Muthanna State Establishment, 40 miles northwest of Baghdad, Iraq's most important chemical weapons production facility in the 1980s.

The mustard-filled shells had been inventoried by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s, but had not been destroyed by the time their monitoring program collapsed in 1998. The inspectors who returned to Iraq last November went to al-Muthanna within days to secure the weapons.

On their daily rounds Wednesday, the second day of a four-day Muslim holiday, helicopter-borne U.N. inspectors also flew off from Baghdad to another, undisclosed site, the Iraqi Information Ministry reported. A third U.N. team inspected water treatment plants, where they're known to be interested in checking supply and use of chlorine, a potential component of chemical weapons.

In the capital, meanwhile, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, a special envoy of Pope John Paul II, met with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz before an expected meeting with President Saddam Hussein .

Etchegaray said he had a personal message from the pope urging Saddam to cooperate fully with the U.N. inspections.

Arriving in Baghdad late Tuesday, the French cardinal, a veteran Vatican diplomatic troubleshooter, told reporters he also was encouraging world leaders "to pursue ceaselessly their efforts for peace. War should be the last of the solutions.

It would be the worst solution one could resign oneself to."

The chief U.N. weapons inspectors will update their assessments of Iraqi cooperation in reports they will file Friday with the U.N. Security Council in New York.

Those reports are expected to help decide the next steps to be taken by the Security Council in the long-running Iraq crisis.

After two days of talks in Baghdad last weekend, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix said he had detected an improved "positive attitude" on the Iraqis' part.

In one apparent sign of that changed attitude, the government announced Wednesday that the Iraqi National Assembly would meet in special session Friday, presumably to enact legislation banning weapons of mass destruction. Such a law was demanded under U.N. resolutions, and the Iraqis said earlier this week they would adopt the statute in the coming days.

The council majority, including France, Germany, Russia and China, want to continue the inspections and oppose U.S. plans for early military action against Iraq, if in the U.S. view it has not disarmed adequately.

In a French newspaper interview published Wednesday, the Russian foreign minister underlined the Kremlin position, saying U.S. evidence against Iraq was insufficient.

"Russian experts analyzed the data presented on Feb. 5 by (Secretary of State) Colin Powell on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in the Le Figaro interview. "Their opinion is that the data is not convincing and that more information must be obtained."

The Bush administration on Tuesday portrayed a new tape attributed to terrorist leader Osama bin-Laden as showing a link between Iraq and bin-Laden's al-Qaida network. In the tape, the speaker expresses support for Iraq in its confrontation with America, but also describes Saddam's Iraqi leadership as "infidels," that is, traitors to Islam.

The Iraqi news media didn't immediately report the purported bin-Laden tape, which emerged late for Baghdad newspaper deadlines. The government newspaper al-Iraq's lead story Wednesday reported on Saddam's meeting with dozens of top Iraqi officials on Tuesday, first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday.

Security Council resolutions adopted since Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War have prohibited chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in Iraq, and limited its missiles to a 94-mile range.

Inspectors in the 1990s oversaw destruction of the bulk of chemical and biological weapons, and dismantled Iraq's program to try to build nuclear weapons. The inspections resumed last November, after a four-year gap, to search for any remaining weapons or revived programs.

The 10-square-mile al-Muthanna installation, where the mustard-gas shells were left behind in 1998, had been heavily bombed by U.S. warplanes in the 1991 Gulf War. Later in the 1990s, the U.N. inspectors moved into the site and destroyed huge amounts of material: 38,500 artillery shells and other chemical-filled weapons, almost 500,000 gallons of liquid material, and 150 pieces of equipment used to make chemical agents, according to a recent Iraqi report.

Mustard, a liquid, gives off a vapor that burns and blisters exposed skin and damages the respiratory system when inhaled.
The ten 155mm artillery shells and four plastic containers containing mustard were not destroyed in 1998 because the inspections process collapsed amid disputes over U.N. access to sensitive Iraqi sites and Iraqi complaints about U.S. intelligence infiltration of the U.N. operation.

During the four-year U.N. absence, the Bush administration contends, Iraq revived banned weapons programs and has retained chemical and biological arms. But it has presented no proof, and in more than 500 inspections thus far, including at sites spotlighted in the U.S. allegations, the U.N. teams have found no major violations of the U.N. bans.

The only banned weapons or components found have been the previously known mustard-gas shells, and 18 empty artillery rocket warheads designed for chemical agents. Those unfilled warheads were discovered at various times in two locations by both U.N. inspectors and the Iraqi government.

PHOTO CAPTION

United Nations weapons inspectors conduct a survey at the Mahmoudia water processing plant 60 kms (37 miles) south of Baghdad Wednesday Feb. 12, 2003. (AP Photo/Jassim Mohamme