UN monitors continue international probe of Iraq for weapons

Teams of inspectors from the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) today continued their investigations into various facilities in Iraq.

A team of missile experts inspected the Al Mamoun Plant, which belongs to the Al Rasheed Company, roughly 60 kilometres south of Baghdad. While there, the team tagged several pieces of declared equipment, which Iraq had manufactured between 1998 and 2002, according to Hiro Ueki, a spokesman for UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Baghdad.

An UNMOVIC multidisciplinary team drove more than 200 kilometres west of Baghdad to inspect a former ammunitions depot used as a chemical weapons storage facility prior to the Persian Gulf War and an adjacent area used in the 1980s for chemical weapons munitions tests, the spokesman said. "Both locations were inspected by the UN Special Commission in the past and are located in the middle of the desert," he added.

Meanwhile, a chemical team inspected the Al Basil Narawan, part of the Al Basil Centre, which produces several chemicals, including sodium carbonates.