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UN teams resume inspections, await weekend reinforcements
Baghdad, Dec 07: UN inspectors visited uranium storage sites and an Iraqi factory that once made munitions for chemical or biological weapons today, a day before reinforcements arrive to bolster their mission.
Baghdad, Dec 07: UN inspectors visited uranium storage
sites and an Iraqi factory that once made munitions for
chemical or biological weapons today, a day before reinforcements arrive to bolster their mission.
Some two dozen UN monitors have been working in Iraq the past two weeks. Up to 35 new inspectors are scheduled to arrive tomorrow, flying in on a regular UN flight from a rear base on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Up to eight helicopters also are expected soon, enabling the arms investigators to stage surprise inspections farther afield than a day-trip driving radius from Baghdad, UN officials say.
After a two-day break for a Muslim holiday, one UN team today visited the al-Quds general company for mechanical industries at Iskandariya, 40 km south of Baghdad, a factory that in the 1980s was associated with Iraq's production of medium-range missiles now prohibited under UN resolutions. The plant also made "special munitions," aerial bombs designed to hold chemical or biological weapons.
The team presumably was checking the site to ensure that similar activities have not resumed in the four years since a previous UN monitoring regime was suspended here. As usual, the UN inspection agency issued no immediate information about the visit.
A second group of inspectors visited "uranium storage site" near the major Iraqi nuclear research centre at al-Tuwaitha, 25 km southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi information ministry officials said.
They may have been interested in large amounts of low- grade uranium, from an Iraqi research reactor, that have been sealed and under monitoring by the international atomic energy agency since the 1990s.
Bureau Report
Some two dozen UN monitors have been working in Iraq the past two weeks. Up to 35 new inspectors are scheduled to arrive tomorrow, flying in on a regular UN flight from a rear base on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Up to eight helicopters also are expected soon, enabling the arms investigators to stage surprise inspections farther afield than a day-trip driving radius from Baghdad, UN officials say.
After a two-day break for a Muslim holiday, one UN team today visited the al-Quds general company for mechanical industries at Iskandariya, 40 km south of Baghdad, a factory that in the 1980s was associated with Iraq's production of medium-range missiles now prohibited under UN resolutions. The plant also made "special munitions," aerial bombs designed to hold chemical or biological weapons.
The team presumably was checking the site to ensure that similar activities have not resumed in the four years since a previous UN monitoring regime was suspended here. As usual, the UN inspection agency issued no immediate information about the visit.
A second group of inspectors visited "uranium storage site" near the major Iraqi nuclear research centre at al-Tuwaitha, 25 km southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi information ministry officials said.
They may have been interested in large amounts of low- grade uranium, from an Iraqi research reactor, that have been sealed and under monitoring by the international atomic energy agency since the 1990s.
Bureau Report