Ritter returns to Iraq to prove Baghdad has no banned weapons

In this story: Ritter claimed UNSCOM was tool of U.S. Saddam Hussein allowed access throughout Iraq RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The man who, not long ago, was the most demonized in Iraq is about to become one of Baghdad's biggest assets in its campaign to lift the U.N. sanctions imposed on the country after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Scott Ritter, the former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer and U.N. weapons inspector once accused by Iraq of spying, is back in that country trying to prove that Iraq no longer has banned weapons. He says he wants to make an objective documentary film about the issue that will prove his point.

VIDEO CNN's Jane Arraf says former U.N. arms inspector Scott Ritter, once demonized in Iraq, has returned to a warm welcome Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     MESSAGE BOARD Situation in Iraq

"Does Iraq have weapons of mass destruction today? Does Iraq possess the ability to produce weapons of mass destruction? The answer is no," Ritter said.

Until he quit the now-defunct U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, Ritter headed inspectors trying to uncover suspected secrets. He was often blocked.

"This refusal means we can't carry out our inspections -- it is a failure of Iraq to comply with obligations," Ritter said at the time.

Inspectors from UNSCOM were forced to leave Iraq in 1998, prompting U.S.-led airstrikes on Baghdad.

In December 1999, the U.N. Security Council created the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, to replace UNSCOM, but inspections have yet to resume.

Baghdad says it has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction and the means to produce them. It immediately rejected the December resolution by the Security Council, which, if agreed to, would lead to the suspension of the sanctions.

Ritter claimed UNSCOM was tool of U.S.

A few months after the inspectors left Iraq, Ritter quit UNSCOM in disgust, saying it had been turned into a tool of the United States.

Ritter has returned to Iraq to interview Iraqi and U.S. officials and revisit some of the inspection sites.

"One of my biggest concerns is that people think I am a tool of the Iraqi government," Ritter said, "that I'll be used as a propaganda piece for the Iraqis.

"Anyone who said that, doesn't know Scott Ritter. I'm a tool of no one but myself."

Ritter says he didn't become a U.S. Marine to see children die under sanctions -- sanctions kept in place, he says, by misinformation about Iraqi weapons.

Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, told Reuters that Ritter was in Iraq "to film a documentary on the impact of the unjust embargo on the Iraqi people and (show) that Iraq has no more weapons of mass destruction."

Amin, whose office served a liaison function with the U.N. weapons inspectors before they left the country in 1998, said Ritter had made a request to film the documentary and Baghdad had agreed.

Saddam Hussein allowed access throughout Iraq

Ritter told The Washington Post in an interview published on Friday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had agreed to give him and his crew access to weapons facilities throughout Iraq with the aim of judging whether Iraq had rebuilt its arsenal since the inspectors left.

But U.S. authorities are unhappy about Ritter's visit. "He is going to places where he was denied access as an inspector," White House national security spokesman P. J. Crowley told Reuters.

"We can all predict that the places he will go to will be thoroughly sanitized and the Iraqis will try to reap as much PR from this as possible," Crowley said.

CNN Correspondent Jane Arraf and Reuters contributed to this report.

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