UN Inspectors Visit Three Iraqi Sites in Third-day Operations

Home>>World

Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, December 01, 2002

UN Inspectors Visit Three Iraqi Sites in Third-day Operations

UN arms inspectors on Saturday visited three suspected sites in their searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for the third day after a four-year suspension.

DISCUSSION

CHINESE

SEND TO FRIEND

UN arms inspectors on Saturday visited three suspected sites in their searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for the third day after a four-year suspension.

The inspection team from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) spent about three hours at a military base in Balad, about 75 km north of Baghdad, searching for biological and chemical weapons and long-range missiles.

A military unit engaged in anti-chemical warfare is stationed at the site, an Iraqi official told reporters there.

Another team of arms experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) went into the Mother of All Battles complex atYusufiya, about 15 km south of Baghdad.

The military complex, which had been monitored by previous UN arms inspectors because it had produced long-range missiles prohibited by UN resolutions, is now a production base for light machinery, according to Iraqi officials at the site.

The complex is affiliated with Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission.

After a three-hour inspection, the IAEA team went on to visit another site named Al-Milad, also part of Iraq's military industrialization program.

The inspectors left their headquarters at 8:30 a.m. local time (0530 GMT) in white Nissan four-wheel-drive cars and immediately divided into two groups.

Both groups were accompanied by officials from Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate in separate cars and followed by dozens of reporters who had waited outside the former Canal Hotel.

The inspectors were allowed into the sites immediately after their arrival, but the reporters were barred from entering the compounds.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the UN inspectors went to five sites that had been visited by arms experts before December 1998 and reported no trouble. They took a day off on Friday, the Islamic holy day of the week.

The weapons inspectors arrived here Monday afternoon, the first time they had been allowed back to Iraq since their withdrawal in 1998.

Continuous spats about alleged espionage activities between Iraqand the UN arms inspectors, who were commissioned to verify that Iraq has been disarmed, led to crisis in 1997 and 1998, and eventually the air war against Baghdad on Dec. 17-19, 1998.

The inspectors have since been barred from entering Iraq again.

Iraq's first real test will come on Dec. 8, when it will be obliged by UN Security Council Resolution 1441 to submit a full account of its weapons programs, although it insists it has no biological, chemical or nuclear arms.

"Further material breach" of Iraq's obligations would incur "serious consequences," the UN document adopted on Nov. 8 warned.

By Jan. 27, the inspectors must give their first report to the UN Security Council.

Questions?Comments? Click here

Australians Protest against Attack on Iraq

Germany Offers Unmanned Plane for UN Weapon Inspection in Iraq

Coalition Warplanes Bomb Iraqi Air-defense Sites

Cabbage Tells Changes of Beijingers' Life ( 12 Messages)

A 'Xiaokang' Society Means Not Merely Money ( 5 Messages)

China Starts Working out Law on Citizen ID Card ( 33 Messages)

Differences between US and NATO Widen: Opinion ( 2 Messages)

Sino-US Relations Improve Despite Neo-realism ( 27 Messages)