Weapons inspectors visit once-restricted Iraqi base
Posted on 12/01/2002 3:32:10 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Weapons inspectors visit once-restricted Iraqi base
Findings undisclosed; U.N. teams satisfied with cooperation
12/01/2002
BALAD, Iraq - International weapons hunters crossed a threshold Saturday, paying their first visit under the new inspection program to a military post once declared "sensitive" and restricted by the Iraqi government.
On the third day of the renewed inspections, U.N. monitors arrived unannounced but received unrestricted access to the Chemical Corps base, as required by the U.N. Security Council when it sent them back to Iraq with greater powers.
Another team, meanwhile, inspected a complex that once was the heart of Iraq's aborted effort to build nuclear bombs.
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"They found nothing," said the commander of the Balad military post north of Baghdad.
The inspections resumed Wednesday under a new Security Council resolution giving Iraq a "final opportunity" to shut down any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs, or face "serious consequences."
Inspections in the 1990s, after the Gulf War, led to destruction of many tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, and equipment to produce them. U.N. teams also dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program before it could produce a bomb. But that inspection regime collapsed in 1998.
Those inspectors believed they never found all the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical arms. The United States now threatens war to disarm the Baghdad government if the new inspections do not.
In their first field missions, the U.N. teams mostly revisited sites with well-known involvement in Iraq's past weapons programs - places where equipment had been disabled or chemical or biological weapons material destroyed after U.N. inspections in the 1990s.
The fact that these installations would receive unannounced visits was no surprise to their managers, but the timing was believed to be. In the case of the Balad military installation, however, the inspection appeared to be largely unexpected.
The convoy of four U.N. vehicles, trailed by pursuing journalists' cars and a cloud of dust, rolled up a country road to the back gate. Iraqi officers, who accompany the U.N. missions to their undisclosed destinations, shouted orders for the area to be "frozen" - under U.N. procedures for sealing off inspection sites.
The 10 inspectors then spent almost five hours crisscrossing the small installation, paying attention to what appeared to be crates of ordnance in open sheds, possibly large artillery shells, bombs or rockets. From beyond the barbed-wired fence, waiting reporters could hear the sound of a hammer and chisel prying open crates.
No kidding?!
They will....
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