Iraq Takes Reporters on Palace Tours

BAGHDAD —  Iraq’s deputy prime minister led foreign reporters on a tour of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces Friday, showing off lawns as big as several soccer fields and ornate sitting rooms that he declared U.N. inspectors will never see.

In New York, U.S. diplomats asked the U.N. Security Council to condemn Iraq’s continuing refusal to open all sites to inspection for illegal weapons.

Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz toured about a dozen palaces with reporters, insisting that Iraq is hiding nothing.

Arms monitors have demanded access to the presidential compounds to determine whether Iraq has met U.N. orders to destroy its weapons of mass destruction--a condition required to end sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, setting off the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“They shall never be allowed in,” Aziz told the reporters. “Their inspection injures the dignity and sovereignty of the nation.”

Iraq wanted reporters to see the palaces “where a lot of mystery has been fabricated,” Aziz said, “so that you can see yourselves that these are normal presidential sites.”

Reporters saw five palaces in the presidential complex on the western bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad, which is off limits to civilians.

One building featured a huge domed hall tiled with Italian marble. Another had bronze statues of soldiers and paintings of Hussein leading his army into victory.

There were two palaces under construction in the sprawling compound, which was large enough that journalists had to take buses from one site to the next.

Staring down from the tops of the palaces were four huge bronze busts of Hussein.

Aziz said the main palace in Baghdad, which was built in the 1950s, was bombed during the Gulf War. A mural showed Hussein helping builders during reconstruction.

Hussein’s personal secretary, Lt. Gen. Abed Hamoud, greeted journalists at one site and restated Iraq’s opposition to opening that palace.

The inspectors “will never be allowed to enter these places even if all are bombed and turned into ruins,” Hamoud said.