Three Iraqi scientists rejected a request by U.N. weapons inspectors to undergo private interviews to aid the U.N. search for evidence of forbidden arms programs, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday. Both the United Nations and the United States have pressed Iraq to persuade its scientists to speak privately to the inspectors, hoping the absence of Iraqi officials would encourage them to be more candid about the nature of their work.

Iraq's government maintains it's doing everything it can to "encourage" the scientists but says they are refusing because of fears their information could be distorted.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry had said late Friday that three scientists the U.N. inspectors wanted to question in private Saturday were "encouraged" to do so. But in the end all three refused, insisting government officials must be present, said a senior Iraqi official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

He said the inspectors interviewed one of the three Saturday, but with Iraqi officials sitting in on the meeting. The identities of the three scientists were not revealed.

Hiro Ueki, spokesman for the U.N. inspectors in Baghdad, confirmed the Iraqi account. He said two scientists refused to be questioned without Iraqi officials present, so the inspectors canceled the interviews altogether.

A team from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency flew by helicopter to the Kurdish region in northern Iraq to interview the third scientist privately, but he would not agree, Ueki's statement said.

"The individual concerned declined the request. The interview was then conducted with a representative of the NMD (Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate) present," Ueki's statement said, adding that the inspectors "will continue to seek interviews in private."

The interview took place inside the northern "no-fly zone" enforced by the United States and Britain since the 1991 Gulf War to protect Iraqi Kurds from Iraq's army.

Ueki's statement said officials from the Iraqi NMD flew on the same helicopter. The United Nations last week canceled an inspection in the no-fly zone when the Iraqi side insisted on following in their own helicopters. Saturday's trip, with the Iraqis on board the U.N. aircraft, was in line with an agreement reached last week to settle the problem.

The subject of private interviews has become a major issue in advance of a report to the U.N. Security Council Monday by chief inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei on Iraq's compliance with U.N. Resolution 1441 giving arms inspectors the right to search for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons anywhere in Iraq.

The U.N. nuclear agency, headed by ElBaradei, said Friday that analyses of samples taken by nuclear inspectors in Iraq have so far not revealed any evidence of prohibited nuclear activity.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Iraqi man, center, shouts as he is dragged away from a U.N.-marked vehicle outside the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad Saturday Jan. 25, 2003.. (AP Photo/Jassim Moh