UN Inspectors Search Former Nuclear Facility

UN arms inspectors today returned to an Iraqi weapons complex used to produce nuclear material in the 80s to check on new construction at the site.

Recent satellite photos of the al-Tuwaitha facilities, 15 miles outside Baghdad, have shown several new buildings of unknown use. The UN inspectors want to make sure that Iraqi scientists have not resumed weapons work in the four years since they were last in the country.

Members of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, conducted a room to room search of the complex last week, but wanted more time to inspect the site.

Many of al-Tuwaitha's buildings were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf war but more than 100 remain.

The complex was scrutinised by IAEA inspectors through the 90s until the UN weapons teams were pulled out of the country ahead of the 1998 Desert Fox bombing campaign.

A second UN team today left Baghdad for an undisclosed destination. They headed west, in the direction of an area of chemical plants and other facilities with connections to Iraq's old chemical and biological weapons programs.

Meanwhile, at the inspections teams' headquarters in Vienna and New York, work continued on the 12,000-page arms declaration submitted by Iraq on Saturday.

Analysis of the declaration is expected to suggest new sites for inspections, especially so-called "dual use" facilities that can alternate between civilian and military use.

If Iraq is eventually found to have cooperated fully with the inspectors, UN resolutions call for the security council to consider lifting economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.

If Iraq is found guilty of noncompliance, on the other hand, the council may consider military action to force Baghdad to abandon nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes.