Nuclear inspectors leave Iraq

Iraq allows the uranium inspections but not U.N. weapons inspectors

By CNN correspondent Jane Arraf

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A team of nuclear experts has left Baghdad after completing an annual inspection of the country's uranium stockpiles.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) team arrived last week to make sure low-grade enriched uranium placed under seal in Iraq by the agency is accounted for.

Team leader, Andrzej Pietruszewski, said they had received all the cooperation they needed from the Iraqi government to carry out the inspection, but did not comment on their findings.

Iraq's secret nuclear programme was destroyed during the Gulf War by the United States and its allies and the remaining facilities were dismantled by the IAEA after the fighting ended.

The international nuclear agency has said Iraq's nuclear programme was essentially dead by the time its inspectors left Iraq 1998, but said it cannot certify what has happened since then.

The IAEA, the world's nuclear watchdog, also conducted more intrusive inspections after the Gulf War under the same mandate as U.N. weapons inspectors.

Those inspections stopped when weapons inspectors pulled out of Iraq in December 1998 just hours before a major U.S. bombing, though the annual IAEA inspections continued.

Iraq is demanding that U.N. sanctions against it be lifted before the other inspectors return.

The four-day annual uranium inspection mission was carried out under the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.