Baghdad, May 26: A team of international experts is visiting Iraq to inspect mobile labs that the United States believes were part of a suspected biological weapons program, a top US military commander said today. Meanwhile, UN nuclear inspectors were preparing to return to the country to conduct a damage assessment of Iraq's largest nuclear facility. The Tuwaitha nuclear complex was repeatedly looted in the early days of the war by nearby villagers who removed barrels believed to have stored radioactive materials. In many cases, the barrels were used to store drinking water, and some villagers have reported health problems that are being investigated by the US-backed health ministry here. Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the Vienna-based international atomic energy agency, said a small team would try to determine what happened to materials the agency had monitored at the site since the end of the 1991 Gulf war. "The mission is limited to verifying Iraq's safeguards obligations," Gwozdecky said.


Inspectors will "determine what is missing and what it will take to recapture that material and ultimately repackage it and reseal it and secure the facility," he added.


Another team of international experts invited by Washington to inspect the mobile laboratories arrived Saturday and is conducting a review of the findings, he said.


"They are here working and will probably need a few days" he told the a news agency.

The two labs already have been inspected by US and British technical experts and a group of scientists from coalition countries.

Bureau Report