UN Arms Experts Visit Iraqi Nuclear, Chemical Sites

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, December 04, 2002

UN Arms Experts Visit Iraqi Nuclear, Chemical Sites

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UN arms inspectors on Wednesday visited a nuclear complex and a former chemical weapons facility in their searches for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for the seventh day after a four-year suspension.

A team of arms experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) went into al-Tuweitha complex run by Iraq's nuclear power authority in Salman Pak, some 25 km southeast of Baghdad.

A nuclear reactor at the facility was bombed by Israel in 1981.

Another inspection team from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) drove to the al-Muthanna State Establishment, about 75 km north of Baghdad.

The facility in the desert was demolished by previous arms inspectors in the 1990s after it was found to be a production base for deadly chemical weapons.

Both groups, accompanied by officials from Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, were allowed into the sites immediately after their arrival.

The weapons inspectors arrived here on Nov. 25, the first back in Iraq since UN arms inspectors withdrew 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 airstrike against Baghdad on Dec. 17-19, 1998.

The inspectors had 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.

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