Row Brews Over Un Role in Libya

The US and Britain are to open their first direct negotiations today with UN nuclear inspectors over how to scrap Libya's secret nuclear bomb project, amid a row over who should be in charge.

The contest over Libya is the third in less than a year, following furious rows between the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and the Americans over the arms inspections in Iraq in the run-up to the war and then over how to deal with Iran after it was found to be running a secret nuclear programme.

John Bolton, the combative US undersecretary of state in charge of arms control, who makes no secret of his contempt for UN agencies, is to lead the talks in Vienna with the IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, who visited Libya a fortnight ago after Colonel Muammar Gadafy announced he was renouncing his weapons of mass destruction programmes under a secret deal with the US and Britain.

While the US accepts that the IAEA should have a role in the Libyan mission, it appears determined to keep the UN inspectors subordinate. IAEA inspectors were not invited to a meeting in London last week between the Libyans, the British and the Americans, and the US has a senior diplomat in Tripoli organising the operations.

The IAEA insists that it is entitled to dismantle the Libyan bomb project and to verify events.

"The IAEA has the treaty-based mandate to do verification. If other countries do their own verification, they will be tampering with the forensics," one source said.

But Gary Milholin, a leading US nuclear analyst, said: "The CIA has been the leader on this and they want it resolved to their own satisfaction. I will be very surprised if they give this up. They're not going to trust anyone else.

The US state department stressed that the mission would be "trilateral", involving the IAEA, the US and Britain.