Site warned before UN team arrives

BAGHDAD - United Nations arms experts visited an agricultural facility near Baghdad yesterday, the fourth day of inspections in a hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Inspectors drove to a base for small planes used in agriculture some 30km northeast of the Iraqi capital. The facility is run by the Agriculture Ministry.

Earlier arms inspectors examined two Iraqi military industrial plants and a "sensitive" Army base.

International Atomic Energy Agency experts spent three hours at the military complex run by the Public Company of the Mother of All Battles, at Yusufiyah, some 15km south of Baghdad.

The company, named after Iraq's term for the 1991 Gulf War, is an arm of the state's Military Industrialisation Commission, which is in charge of developing weapons. Plant officials say it produces light machinery, including spare parts for vehicles.

The chief of the site, Hussein Hamoudi, told reporters he was informed by Iraqi liaison officials of the visit about an hour before the inspectors arrived at 9am local time on Saturday.

The UN arms team spokesman in Baghdad, Yashuhiro Ueki, said the inspectors were vigilant in keeping plans of the visits unannounced. He was not sure if the Iraqis had called all key sites to be visited or if the call to Hamoudi was a specific alert.

UN sources had said recently that the inspectors had asked for electronic equipment to scan their operations centre in Baghdad against possible bugging during the inspectors' four-year absence.

Hamoudi said the inspectors took some samples from the complex, which was bombed during a December 1998 US and British air campaign against Iraq. He denied the plant had ever produced weapons of mass destruction, but Ueki said it had a "dual use" capability.

Before returning to their headquarters, the atomic energy agency experts spent two hours at another nearby Military Industrialisation Commission complex named Milad, in Yusufiyah. That facility, originally planned for nuclear research, was intensively investigated by UN inspectors in the 1990s.

Another group of UN inspectors drove to an Iraqi Army post near Balad, 75km north of the capital.

The inspectors spent five hours at the post which has missile and ammunition warehouses. The Chemical Defence Battalion, a unit specialising in decontamination after any attacks by nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, is also deployed there, an Iraqi officer said.

Ueki said inspectors arrived unannounced and had immediate access.

In Berlin, the German Defence Ministry said it was considering a request from the inspectors for unmanned reconnaisance planes.

The "Luna X-2000" aircraft are equipped with digital colour and heat-seeking cameras and would be used to fly over large and difficult-to-access chemical or industrial complexes.

- REUTERS

Herald feature: Iraq