Six key Muslim nations urged Iraq to show greater cooperation with UN weapons inspectors as the United States issued a stunning indictment that Baghdad was doing just the opposite. "We call solemnly on the Iraqi leadership to move irreversibly and sincerely towards assuming its responsibilities in restoring peace and stability in the region," said a statement adopted in Istanbul by the foreign ministers of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey.

The Istanbul statement implored Iraq to "demonstrate a more active approach in providing Iraq's inventory of information and material concerning her capabilities of weapons of mass destruction."

It also urged Baghdad "to embark on a policy that will unambiguously inspire confidence to Iraq's neighbors" and "to take firm steps towards national reconciliation" in order to preserve the country's unity and territorial integrity.

White House Issues 6-Page Statement

The White House, in a six-page statement issued ahead of Monday's report to the UN Security Council by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, drew a damning litany of Iraq's efforts to thwart inspections.

Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, officially tasked with working with the United Nations, actually coordinates "anti-inspections" by tipping off inspection sites and uses government "minders" to intimidate witnesses, said the report.

Those minders are often former engineers and scientists with direct experience in banned nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, who know what needs to be, concealed from the UN inspectors, according to the document.

In addition, Iraqi security agencies deploy thousands of people to hide documents and materiel from UN inspectors, whose activities they closely monitor, the White House charged.

"These 'anti-inspectors' vastly outnumber the 200 (UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) and the IAEA personnel on the ground in Iraq," said the report.

The document said UN inspectors in Iraq were "labeled as spies...and treated as the enemy, not as a partner in disarmament."

At the pinnacle of Iraq's covert campaign to thwart inspections was a coordinating body called the Special Security Organization, headed by Saddam's son, Qusay.

"Instead of national initiatives to disarm, Iraq's SSO and National Monitoring Directorate are national programs involving thousands of people to target inspectors and thwart their duties," said the White House.

Wofowitz's Speech to The Council on Foreign Affairs

In New York, Deputy US Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ordered scientists who cooperate with UN inspectors killed along with their families.

"Today, we know from multiple sources that Saddam has ordered that any scientist who cooperates during interviews will be killed, as well as their families," Wolfowitz said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Affairs.

He said the United States had learned Iraq had acquired the technical know-how to hack into UN and International Atomic Energy Agency computers, blocked surveillance flights by U-2 spy planes, and was hiding documents and other arms evidence in remote areas, private homes and beneath mosques and hospitals.

Wolfowitz said Saddam was engaged in "a shell game played on a grand scale with deadly serious weapons" to thwart disarmament efforts in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

Wolfowitz also said Iraqi scientists, besides being threatened with death for telling the truth, were being tutored on what to say. Iraqi intelligence officers were posing as scientists to be interviewed by the inspectors, he said.

"We already have multiple reports and other evidence of intensified efforts to hide documents in places where they are unlikely to be found, such as private homes of low-level officials and universities," he said.

"We have many reports and other evidence of (weapons) material being relocated to agricultural areas and private homes, hidden beneath mosques or hospitals," he said

The materials were constantly being moved, he said.

Wolfowitz provided no details to support his charges but said they came not only from satellites and communications intercepts "but from brave people who told the truth at the risk of their lives.

"At some point we can probably talk about more of it, but right now time is running out. It is time for Saddam Hussein to do something that he clearly hasn't done yet, and it would be the essential solution to the problem," he said.

"The key, in fact, here to achieving the one alternative to war, which is cooperative disarmament, is to persuade Saddam Hussein that he must act. We are going to have to have some very powerful evidence that he has changed and that we can trust him."

PHOTO CAPTION

Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, right, sits next to Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara, second right, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, second left, and Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, left, during a dinner given for foreign ministers from Middle East countries meeting in Istanbul to urge Baghdad to obey U.N. disarmament demands, Thursday Jan. 23, 2003. (AP Photo/Fatih Saribas,