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Iraqi scientist: U.N. inspection 'like The Godfather'ElBaradei: Inspection carried out "in a professional way"
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An Iraqi scientist slammed what he called "Mafia-like" tactics employed by U.N. inspectors who searched his house Thursday, alleging Saturday that they used his wife's illness to try to persuade him to leave the country. Physicist Faleh Hassan Al Basri said a female American inspector told him the United Nations could help expedite departure for him and his wife, who has diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney stones. "Never, never, never ever," Al Basri told reporters. "Even if I have instruction from my government, I would not leave my country." Al Basri said the inspection Thursday -- one of two at the private homes of Iraqi scientists -- was unnecessarily intrusive. The search included the bedroom where his ailing wife was lying in bed. A female inspector approached her, he said. "She tried to kiss my wife, to be more human. But at that time, she's searching my wife. She was thinking, maybe she had hidden some reports. Is that human? Tell me." Al Basri said he felt he had no choice but to cooperate. "It was like 'The Godfather,'" he said. When the inspectors found documents they wanted copied -- which Al Basri said were mainly articles he had written and papers he considered inconsequential -- the scientist insisted on being present during the copying and refused to go to the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which he said was not neutral ground. Eventually, copies were made at the hotel in Baghdad where the inspectors are staying, but Al Basri said the ordeal at the hotel took hours, with inspectors interrogating him until 6 a.m. He said the documents were noted in the 12,000-page weapons declaration that Iraq sent to the United Nations, but Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the papers were not mentioned. The research they concern could have been applied to enriching uranium, ElBaradei said. Al Basri offered to meet with ElBaradei. "I'll go page by page with him to see how these reports are aligned perfectly with what we had stated" in the declaration, he said. "It's like, I come to your house and I see a pipe for water ... I say, 'This pipe, you could make a gun out of it.' It's ridiculous." ElBaradei dismissed the scientist's criticism, saying the inspection was carried out "in a professional way." The discovery raises a number of questions, he added. "Why have these documents not been provided to us? Why have they been kept in a private home? Why have [the Iraqis] not come out on their own to say, 'Here are the originals.' "The point is, if you are transparent, you come out with the original documents, and we have not seen [these documents] before." The inspectors also asked Al Basri to lead them to a farm he sold in 1995. During that visit, when the Iraqi monitoring director stepped out of earshot, the American inspector asked him if he was "thinking about alternatives," Al Basri said. The scientist added that she offered to take his wife out of the country for medical treatment and bring him along. Al Basri said he turned down the offer. "I said, 'No, thank you. Our medicine in Iraq is better.'"
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