Weapons inspectors visit three sites

UN inspectors hunting for banned weapons of mass destruction that Iraq may be hiding visited a missile plant south of Baghdad that had aroused US suspicions.

The site was one of three the newly bolstered inspection team visited today, according to a statement from the inspectors’ Baghdad headquarters.

With the arrival of 15 additional inspectors on Saturday, the total now stands at 113.

Hiro Ueki, a spokesman for the U.N. program in Baghdad, had described Saturday as the busiest in terms of sites visited since the teams returned to Iraq on November 27 after a four-year hiatus.

The sites visited today included Al Mutasim, a government missile plant occupying the grounds of a former nuclear facility 46 miles south of Baghdad, the inspectors said. As usual, they offered no details about what they sought or found.

Al-Mutasim was cited in a CIA intelligence report released in October detailing what US officials said was evidence Iraq was producing chemical and biological weapons and means to deliver them, as well as seeking nuclear weapons.

The CIA report said the scale of some of the work at Al-Mutasim suggested Iraq would work on prohibited weapons there.

Also today, the inspectors returned to a missile complex north of Baghdad that they had examined a day earlier.

The missile complex, the government-owned al-Nasr company, 30 miles north of Baghdad, also houses sophisticated machine tools that can, for example, help manufacture gas centrifuges. Such centrifuges are used to enrich uranium to bomb-grade level – a method favoured by the Iraqis in their bomb program of the late 1980s.

Haithem Shihab, manager of a factory in the complex, said the inspectors compared the facility to site plans and checked machinery.

“Today’s inspection went smoothly, and we provided the inspectors with all the information they asked for. They entered all the places they wanted. We answered all questions. They made sure that there are no prohibited activities in this factory,” Shihab said today.

Shihab said his factory produced parts for missiles with a range no greater than 43 miles. Under UN resolutions, Iraq cannot have missiles with a range greater than 90 miles.

Also today, International Atomic Energy Agency experts on the U.N. team inspected Um-Al Maarek – Mother of Battles – a government facility 12 miles south of Baghdad.