US officials said Friday they would provide United Nations inspectors new intelligence, gathered primarily by spy satellites, in the hope that it would lead them to Iraqi chemical and biological stockpiles.
The new data may be delivered to the United Nations as early as this weekend, they said, according to the New York Times.
During the last week, Hans Blix, a chief weapons inspector, has said that he cannot make his inspections more precise without specific intelligence information from Washington.
Up till now, the White House has been reluctant to provide the information. According to officials, they were fearful that the information could leak to the Iraqis, the Times said in its Saturday edition.
According to a high-level administration official, as early as this weekend, the inspectors would be given higher quality intelligence that would be delivered to the United Nations inspection team's headquarters in New York and to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
However, several officials suggested that the first information sent to the UN would not be the best, or most specific, currently available to US agencies.
"Based on our historical experience with Unscom," said one top official, referring to the United Nations inspection group that operated in Iraq until 1998, "they had a very difficult time keeping information from falling into Iraqi hands." (Albawaba.com)
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