Iraq Certain U.S. Will Attack, Official Says

BAGHDAD —  The Iraqi government is certain the United States will attack it, despite Baghdad’s agreement to expand cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, a senior Iraqi official said Tuesday.

“It is possible any minute, any second that while the inspectors are still here, the aggression will take place,” Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said.

In negotiations Sunday and Monday with the top weapons inspectors, Iraq gave ground on procedural snares in the 2-month-old U.N. monitoring regime, including promising to encourage Iraqi scientists to speak in private with inspectors.

But the United States has rejected Iraq’s claim that it has no more biological, chemical or nuclear weapons and is sending tens of thousands of troops to the Persian Gulf for a possible attack.

Ramadan said Tuesday that Washington wants to “create the idea that Iraq isn’t cooperating.” By improving cooperation with the United Nations, “we wanted to remove this cover, so the aggression would be seen as only an American- Zionist one,” he said.

U.N. inspectors made unannounced visits Tuesday to the QaQa Co., a chemical and explosives plant south of Baghdad, and the Al Mutasim missile plant to the west, among other sites.

Meanwhile, President Saddam Hussein told army commanders Tuesday he has good reason to be happy these days, striking a confident note in the face of the biggest U.S. military buildup since Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“I want you to know that even when I am not smiling, I am in fact smiling,” the Iraqi leader said, in the latest in a series of morale-boosting meetings with the military.

“It reflects my joy at the path we chose ... and because I am happy to be the leader of men of your caliber,” he said, quoted by the official Iraqi News Agency.

Hussein said he also has reason to be happy and smiling when he reflects on his life.

“It is not easy for an activist to say things and believe in an ideology while still a schoolboy and stay committed to them when he is no longer a schoolboy but a leader of a people, an army and a state.”

Hussein, who pledged Friday to defeat Iraq’s enemies at the gates of Baghdad, has been shown on state television nightly this week giving army commanders upbeat addresses about how he expects them to fare in the event of war.