BAGHDAD, December 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Nobel peace laureate Betty Williams made a brief visit to Baghdad Tuesday, December 17, where she met Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, as Human Rights Watch urged Washington not to attack Iraq with cluster bombs.

Williams, a Northern Ireland native who resettled in the United States, said she came to show her solidarity with the Iraqi people ahead of the possible U.S. war on Iraq, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

She toured a children's hospital and took time out to criticize the U.N. trade sanctions on Iraq and their toll on the country's civilian population.

Williams won the 1976 Nobel peace prize along with Mairead Corrigan for her work to promote peace in Northern Ireland where she was a founder of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement, later renamed the Community of Peace People.

Her visit followed a high-profile stay in Baghdad by Hollywood star Sean Penn last week.

Penn visited a hospital and criticized the U.S. policy towards Iraq, saying he did not understand why U.S. leaders have not made public "the evidence that they claim to have on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Meanwhile, in New York, Human Rights Watch exhorted the George W. Bush administration to learn from its actions in Afghanistan and rethink its use of cluster bombs in the event of a war with Iraq.

In a 65-page report, the New York-based rights watchdog said the United states dropped nearly 250,000 cluster "bomblets" in its air campaign against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, injuring scores of civilians, especially children, both during and after strikes.

"As war looms in Iraq, the United states should learn from the lessons of its Afghanistan air war," said Bonnie Docherty, researcher in the arms division of Human Rights Watch.

"It should not use cluster bombs at all until the dud rate has been brought way down.

"At the very least, it should never use cluster bombs near inhabited towns and villages," Docherty said.

Cluster bombs consist of a container which opens before hitting the ground, scattering some 200 projectiles - or "bomblets" - the size of a small can which in turn explode, spraying dozens of tiny fragments of metal, each capable of killing a person.

However, a number of the bomblets are "duds" and fail to explode.

They remain on the ground and can easily detonate if picked up by a child.

"We are not arguing for a ban on cluster bombs," Docherty said. "What we want is better targeting and technology in order to reduce the humanitarian side effects."

Meanwhile, Hiro Ueki, the spokesman for U.N. arms inspectors in Iraq, said Baghdad is working on the list of scientists involved in alleged banned weapons programs requested by the United Nations.

"I understand they are working on it," the spokesman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told reporters.

The list should "include names from the top down to the level of scientists and engineers," he replied when asked how far down the chain of responsibility the list was expected to reach.

The United Nations announced last week it had given Iraq until the end of the month to provide a complete list of scientists currently and formerly involved in its chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programs and associated research, development and production facilities.

The obligation to provide the list is contained in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 which tightened the disarmament regime and gave Iraq a final opportunity to cooperate with U.N. arms inspectors.

Iraq's top liaison with the U.N. inspectors, General Hossam Mohammed Amin, had said Baghdad was drawing up the list and waiting for a formal request from the United Nations, which U.N. chief arms inspector Hans Blix sent Thursday, December 16.

Under Resolution 1441, the inspectors have new powers to whisk scientists and their families abroad for questioning.

"Let's wait for the list," said Ueki when asked if the U.N. had plans for debriefing Iraqi scientists abroad.

U.N. officials have made it clear they remain reluctant to use the authority, despite strong U.S. pressure to do so.

In another development, Iraq's anti-aircraft defenses opened fire on U.S. and British warplanes in its southern airspace, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

"Our heroic missile forces and brave ground-to-air defenses confronted" the hostile aircraft that returned to their bases in Kuwait, an air defense command spokesman told the official INA news agency.

He said U.S. and British war planes carried out 24 sorties over southern Iraq Tuesday.

On Sunday, December 15, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri accused Britain and the United States of waging an "undeclared war" on Iraq, in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Sabri also attacked Kuwait for hosting coalition aircraft which patrol a no-fly zone over southern Iraq.