Hotline call opens up locked Baghdad rooms

Weapons inspectors were today banned from entering locked rooms in Iraq’s Communicable Disease Control Centre and were forced to use its hotline to higher Baghdad authorities for the first time.

The inspectors were held up for two hours before they were finally permitted to enter the rooms.

“It is a newly declared site and there was a need for tagging of some of its equipment,” said Iraqi General Hossam Mohammed Amin, head of the National Monitoring Directorate. “There is no problem.”

Another Iraqi official said the problem was the result of the inspections taking place on the Muslim day of prayer, when the keys for the locked rooms were not readily available.

The inspections marked the first time the UN teams have been in the field on a Friday.

The inspectors subsequently sealed the doors against their being opened when the UN teams were not present.

A team of inspectors also visited the Ibn Al-Haithem Company, which Iraqi officials would only describe as an industrial facility for the military, six miles from Baghdad.