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UN arms inspectors took no day-off on Wednesday, the Christmas day, and visited seven Iraqi sites suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction, their spokesman Hiro Ueki said in a statement.
A team of biological experts from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) paid their unannounced visit to the "Al Taji Single Cell Protein (SCP) Plant" within a liquid propane gas (LPG)-filling company, some 23 km northwest of Baghdad.
"The name SCP Plant no longer exists. The plant used to be a building, which has now been remodeled for use by the LPG-filling company," Ueki said.
The UNMOVIC chemical team, which on Tuesday went to the port city of Basra, about 600 km south of Baghdad, and stayed overnight,on Wednesday carried out their inspections at the Basra State Establishment for Paper Industry.
Meanwhile, some UNMOVIC missile experts "inventoried storage buildings at the Al Kadhimiya Plant and at Shumouk Stores, located approximately 30 km north of Baghdad," according to Ueki's statement.
Also on Wednesday, nuclear experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the Hatteen Fateh Explosives Factory near the town of Musayab, some 60 km south of the capital.
"This is a very large complex that produces explosives for military bombs, shells and rockets. The team focused attention on changes at the site in the last four years that could aid a nuclearprogram," Ueki said.
The IAEA team went on to the Um Al Maarik Factory, a large facility that produces metal parts for military programs, to "monitor the production of indigenous components of possible dual use."
In what Ueki described as a "cooperative venture," the IAEA team joined with Iraqi auditors to make "item counts of important dual-use materials" and compare their results at the Al Qa Qaa explosives plant.
"Hundreds of items were counted. The results will be used as part of a verification of Iraq's use of special metals," Ueki said.
Currently there are 104 inspectors in Iraq, 98 of whom are from the UNMOVIC and six from the IAEA.
They must give their first report to the UN Security Council about Iraq's weapons programs on Jan. 27.
(Xinhua News Agency December 26, 2002)
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