RUSSIA'S FOREIGN MINISTRY: LATEST INFORMATION ON IRAQI ARMS A FABRICATION








MOSCOW, March 5. /RIA Novosti correspondent/. "A fabrication", said Russia's Foreign Ministry, describing a Financial Times report that the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission /UNMOVIC/ in Iraq has found additional confirmation that Baghdad has weapons of mass destruction and delivery vehicles for them.


	The Ministry's information and press department says that the newspaper refers to a closed UNMOVIC meeting in Vienna on February 21-23, which all but approved an experts' list of remaining problems in Iraq.


	The political background for this report, the Foreign Ministry believes, is obvious - "the fresh evidence" of a military threat from Baghdad must justify the US and British demand that anti-Iraqi sanctions remain.


	The Vienna meeting, the Russian Foreign Ministry indicated, did examine an experts' list of "blank spaces" in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that need eliminating. But this list is based on archival materials. The point, the Ministry explained, is that since UN inspectors left Iraq unilaterally and the US and Britain carried out their Desert Fox Operation there has been no international monitoring system in Iraq and there is no authentic information to this effect.


	"Members of the UMOVIC meeting, far from approving expert findings, actually criticised the approach aimed at effectively perpetuating the old problems," the department said.