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Politics : Attack Iraq? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (3252)	12/30/2002 3:25:10 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8683

U.N. Inspectors Visit Three New Sites in Iraq URL: foxnews.com Monday, December 30, 2002 BAGHDAD, Iraq — Teams of U.N. inspectors searched at least six sites in Iraq for banned weapons provoking ire at a missile factory they inspected for the fourth time. The tours included three new sites -- the Central Health Laboratory, the General Commission of Plants Protection and the al-Mahmoudiya water purification station on the Euphrates River, where inspectors examined materials that have both civilian and military uses. One inspection team headed toward the Iran border, Information Ministry officials said, but its purpose and destination was not known. Other teams revisited the al-Nidaa factory south of Baghdad, which manufactures mechanical parts and equipment for different types of missiles, and the Thaat al-Sawari plant, a fiberglass production plant in the al-Taji area, 18 miles north of Baghdad. Another made a fourth visit to the al-Samood missile factory about 25 miles west of Baghdad, to the plant manager's distress. Factory manager Hussein Mohammed complained to reporters that the U.N. inspectors had "stormed in" and unnecessarily disrupted his workers. "As soon as they entered the site, they spread everywhere, acting like gangs," Mohammed said. "They went to all workshops and buildings inside the site. They prevented anyone from in entering or exiting. They behaved in a provocative manner." The government-owned al-Samood factory manufactures components for al-Samood missiles, which have a normal range of about 30 miles. U.N. resolutions bar Iraq from having missiles with a range of more than 90 miles. U.S. and British intelligence reports contend Iraq is extending the al-Samood's range beyond permitted limits. Mohammed's complaint echoed remarks last week by Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, Iraq's chief liaison to the U.N. arms experts, that the U.N. inspections were becoming "annoying." On both occasions, U.N. inspectors declined to comment. Under U.N. resolutions, the inspectors do not have to warn Iraq of their visits. The teams have been in Iraq for more than a month, arriving four years after the last examinations by a previous U.N. organization that left Iraq shortly before U.S. and British bombing in 1998. Also Monday, 13 U.S. religious leaders and experts on a humanitarian mission to Iraq were scheduled to visit a hospital, mosque and a church in Baghdad. The delegation, which arrived Sunday, is headed by Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches. Speaking to another visiting delegation, of 140 peace activists from Spain, President Saddam Hussein's chief science adviser Amir al-Saadi repeated Iraq's assertion that it has no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons or the missiles to deliver them. If Iraq can convince the U.N. inspectors of that, it could avoid a threatened U.S. military strike. While repeating that Iraq has no forbidden weapons, al-Saadi accused the United States of playing politics and ignoring Iraqi efforts to cooperate with the weapons inspectors who arrived in November under U.N. Security Council resolution 1441. Iraq has maintained it is following to the letter the latest U.N. resolution, but leaders of the new inspection program have said Iraq's required declaration on its past weapons programs issued Dec. 7 is incomplete. The United States was severely critical of the declaration and has repeatedly threatened to attack Iraq.