US wins battle to see Iraq's unedited weapons report

Washington has won full access to the Iraqi arms dossier in an embarrassing blow to Hans Blix, the UN's chief inspector, who had said it would be edited on security grounds before being passed on to member countries.

The Security Council's third change of rules in four days – giving the five permanent council members, including Britain, an unedited version of the Baghdad report – will be seen as another example of the United States getting its way in its acrimonious relationship with the UN mission.

The UN demands laid down in resolution 1441 called for the declaration from Saddam Hussein's government on its chemical, biological, ballistic and nuclear programmes to be passed on to all 15 members of the Security Council.

This provision was changed on Friday after concern was raised that some countries in the council, notably Syria, might make use of the information in the 12,000 page document to develop their own weapons of mass destruction.

That evening, Mr Blix made the surprise announcement that his teams would expunge details from the report before it was handed over to the council. No exception would be made for any country, he said.

The US had backed the change after failing to persuade the council that the dossier should be restricted to itself and the four other permanent members – Britain, Russia, France and China.

However, according to UN and diplomatic sources, at the instigation of the more hawkish members of the Bush administration, Washington began a "concerted and focused campaign" over the weekend for the ruling to be changed again.

Washington and London are believed to have been concerned that the UN and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) editing might hamper their own analysts from comparing the declaration against alleged intelligence material held on Iraq's mass destruction programme by the two countries.

Washington was especially irritated by what it saw as needless delay, with every day spent studying the report eating into the military campaigning season, which in effect ends in March with the onset of hot weather.

Mohamed al-Baradei, the director of IAEA, and Alfonso Valdiviezo, the Colombian ambassador and this month's president of the Security Council, were the main recipients of American pressure.

Mr Blix, vilified by right-wingers in the White House for his supposed lack of aggression towards Iraq, was ignored, senior sources said. Asked about Mr Baradei, a UN official said: "Of course he is under pressure. Every day there has been contact."

The campaign was successful. The Security Council changed its mind again and agreed to the American plan, although Colombia is also likely to get a copy of the unedited report because it holds the council presidency.

One council diplomat said: "The spirit of the conversation on Friday was to keep the material out of the hands of non-nuclear powers. Over the weekend, they all decided that if the permanent five already had nuclear capabilities, they had nothing to learn from an unsanitised version."

The other non-permanent members – Syria, Ireland, Singapore, Norway, Mexico, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea and Mauritius – will receive their copies in a week, after the vetting by UN officials.

¿ Washington ordered UN weapons inspectors to visit President Saddam's Al-Sajoud presidential palace last Tuesday to test the accuracy of US intelligence tracking the dictator, Iraqi officials claimed in Time magazine yesterday.

Their information appeared accurate when, only 10 minutes after arriving, the inspectors were greeted by the Iraqi leader's personal secretary, Abed Hamid Mohmood.