Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, said he was unaware if the Iraqi air force had tried to intercept the planes.

But a U.S. official said Iraq “informed us when the planes were in the air that only one was acceptable and the second would be viewed as ‘hostile.”‘

He said the inspectors asked Washington to temporarily suspend the flights, flown on behalf of the United Nations, until U.S. and U.N. officials could meet on the incident in New York. Iraq, the U.S. official said, had been told about the two aircraft 48 hours in advance.

Should Iraq be found to have interfered with the flights, chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix, executive chairman of UNMOVIC, is obligated to report the incident to the U.N. Security Council immediately.

But Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, whose country opposes military action against Iraq, contended that “UNMOVIC is not considering it a provocation.” He said the incident was a “misunderstanding” and “blown out of proportion.”

Buchanan told reporters, “I can confirm that two U-2 reconnaissance aircraft operating on behalf of the UNMOVIC operated in Iraqi air space this morning.”

“Although Iraq had been notified of a flight time window, they expressed surprise and concern that two flights were operating simultaneously. In the interests of safety, UNMOVIC requested the aircraft to withdraw,” he said, adding that further U-2 and Mirage flights were still planned.

U.N. sources said there was no agreement that only one U-2 aircraft could fly at one time, although that had been past practice.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/11/international/11WIRE-U2.html

A Pentagon official said the decision to end the mission “in the interest of safety.”

The U-2 planes were flying missions at 2 a.m. Iraqi time for the U.N. weapons inspectors when Iraq launched fighter jets. According to two of the officials, the threat was directed against one of the two planes, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Multiple flights are permitted under a U.N. Security Council resolution approved last November, and the Bush administration sought clarification from U.N. inspectors after the U-2 flights were suspended.

The U.N. inspection agency, known, as UNMOVIC, had given advance notice to Iraq of the flights, said the U.S. official.

The Iraqi threat is fresh evidence of Baghdad’s unwillingness to cooperate with U.N. inspectors, another U.S. official said.

Two American U-2 planes were already in the air, the senior official said. He said they were the seventh and eighth sent on a surveillance assignment since the council approved the resolution unanimously, and that the flights had been coordinated with the U.N. inspection agency.

But Iraq “raised a fuss,” this official said, and the two flights were recalled. American diplomats are checking with the U.N. agency before resuming U-2 flights, the official said.

The dispute punctuated a behind-the-scenes effort by the United States and Britain to win support for a new resolution designed to back the use of force as a last resort to disarm Iraq.

U-2 flights are conducted as part of an elaborate inspection arrangement designed to determine whether President Saddam Hussein has secretly stored chemical and biological weapons in defiance of U.N. resolutions.

Typically, Iraq is notified in advance of overflights of Iraqi territory.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2003/03/11/us-suspends-u-2-flights-over-iraq/