CAIRO, November 25 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - UN arms inspections resuming this week will be a substitute rather than a prelude for war if Iraq cooperates, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief said Monday, November 25, assuring UN neutrality and adding that Israel's case was “different” since it had violated no international accords.

However, "if Baghdad does not cooperate, the consequences will be serious, not only for Iraq but for the whole region," Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters following talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

"If Iraq cooperates fully with the UN, and if we can make quick progress in the near future and present positive reports to the UN Security Council, the inspections will amount to a substitute and not a prelude for war," he said.

ElBaradei said the start of inspections on Wednesday is "an occasion for Iraq to prove it does not have weapons of mass destruction, and in this case, will be the start of a process which will get Iraq out of its international isolation."

The IAEA director, an Egyptian national, arrived in Cairo late Sunday for talks with Mubarak and Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa.

He was speaking hours before inspectors from the IAEA and the UN monitoring agency UNMOVIC were due to arrive in Baghdad to begin their mission.

ElBaradei underscored Sunday, November 24, the neutrality of United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq and said Israel's case was different since it had violated no international accords.

"We hope public opinion will be assured when inspections resume on November 27 that they are carried out objectively and professionally," ElBaradei told a press conference upon arrival in Cairo.

The IAEA head is to hold two days of talks in Cairo with Egyptian and Arab League leaders, who also plan to raise the issue of Arab inspectors within the UN disarmament mission.

ElBaradei said it was his responsibility, as well as that of Hans Blix, head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to "ensure inspectors have the highest degree of neutrality and objectivity".

The two men began on November 18 in Baghdad to prepare for the resumption of a UN disarmament mission, mandated by Security Council Resolution 1441 to verify Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction.

Baghdad has said U.S. President George W. Bush will use any glitch in that mission to justify a military attack against Iraq.

Iraq is expected to present by December 8 a full accounting of it alleged programs for the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, ElBaradei indicated.

"We will then continue the inspections to ensure this declaration is correct and precise," he said, adding this was done in all countries which submit similar statements.

In a letter to UN chief Kofi Annan published Sunday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said clauses relating to the arms declaration that Baghdad is required to produce aim at "distorting the position of Iraq and using the (declaration) to launch an aggression against Iraq."

But a U.S. State Department official told Monday's edition of Time magazine that Washington had not gone too far down the path to war for alternatives to full-blown military action to take place.

Sabotage from inside may provide an alternative to bombing Iraq or marching into Baghdad, and "could help promote the longer-term destabilization of Saddam's government," without necessarily committing U.S. forces, the official said.

As Britain's House of Commons prepared to debate military action against Iraq, a new opinion poll in the left-wing Guardian daily suggested that British opinion was almost equally split, but the number in favor was growing.

But Germany's Defense Minister Peter Struck ruled out a German nuclear, biological and chemical weapons unit based in Kuwait taking part in a conflict with Iraq.

Speaking on ZDF public television, Struck, whose country has rejected military participation in a possible war on Iraq, said the German parliament would have to vote on a new mandate for the unit if it were to change its anti-terrorism role.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that the International Energy Agency was prepared to provide world markets with as much as 12 million barrels of oil a day if supplies from the Middle East are disrupted by a possible war in Iraq.

ElBaradei also made a clear distinction between the case of Israel and Iraq concerning weapons of mass destruction, just days after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak demanded Israel be subjected to arms inspections to rid the Jewish state of its own weapons program.

"There is a difference between the case of Iraq, which has been subjected to sanctions for having invaded Kuwait and those who have violated the accords on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and this is the case of Israel," he said.

He compared Israel's situation to that of India and Pakistan who joined the nuclear club in 1998.

He said "despite their possession of weapons of massive destruction they have.... not “utilized” these weapons while Iraq has utilized chemical weapons."

This was a reference to Iraq's use of chemical weapons against its native Kurdish population as well as against Iran during the two countries' 1980-1988 war.

But ElBaradei said: "We have however great hopes for eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the world, but the case of each country is different from the other," he added.

"An agreement exists among countries, including Israel, on the necessity of eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the Middle East, but Israel believes this must be realized in the framework of a comprehensive and durable peace," he said.

Israel possess weapons of mass destruction, including an arsenal of nuclear missiles, although it has never formally admitted to them.

Mubarak demanded on November 16 that Israel's weapons of mass destruction be submitted to the same UN inspections being imposed on Iraq.