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U.N. inspection teams step up pace
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- United Nations weapons inspection teams stepped up their pace from recent days and headed to several sites across the country Monday, including a nuclear facility outside Baghdad that experts have visited many times. Meanwhile, two top weapons inspectors may return to Iraq next month, a source at the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday. Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons inspector, and Mohamed Elbaradei, director-general of the IAEA, could leave by January 19. A spokesman for UNMOVIC -- the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission -- declined to confirm the trip, saying details have not been finalized. Inspectors visit factoryOne team of weapons inspectors revisited the Al Samood factory, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Baghdad, which manufactures major components for the Al Samood missile, according to the IAEA. The IAEA said the factory belongs to the Al Karama State Company and began its operations in 1999. Another IAEA team visited a suspected missile factory -- Thaet Al-Sawari -- in Taji, about 19 miles (30 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Taji was the primary location for Iraq's indigenous long-range missile program, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit policy research group focused on nuclear arms reduction. A separate team of biologists headed to Baghdad's central health laboratory and the high commission of land protection in the Baghdad district of Abu Ghareeb. Chemical weapons inspectors toured the Al Nidda facility at Zaafarniyah, a suburb south of Baghdad. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the Al Nidda facility specializes in nuclear research and production. A joint U.N. team inspected a water treatment in Al Qa'qa, along the Euphrates River about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Baghdad. On Saturday, a team of missile experts visited Al Qa'qa, a site listed by British intelligence officials as a chemical complex that may be producing phosgene, which can be used as a chemical agent. The facility was severely damaged in the 1991 Gulf War but has been repaired and is operational, according to a British white paper released on Iraq in September. Another communications team toured the town of Al Mumthiryah, near the Iraq-Iran border. The Iraqi government Saturday gave the inspectors a list of more than 500 scientists who have been associated with the country's weapons programs, a spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring and Verification and Inspection Commission said. The inspectors are under U.S. pressure to take scientists and their families out of Iraq for the interviews. U.S. officials have said they believe the scientists would speak more freely if they were assured that the Iraqi president could not retaliate. "The matter of getting the Iraqi scientists out of Iraq is an American plan aiming at terrifying or luring them to give false information as this took place with others who got out previously," said Amer As-Sa'di, an Iraqi presidential adviser. Blix has said repeatedly the United Nations was not in the business of abduction. So far, two Iraqi scientists have been interviewed by U.N. inspectors inside Iraq. Both said they would have refused to leave the country. Meanwhile, Iraq's state run media stepped up their campaign to stave off a possible U.S. attack by capitalizing on anti-American sentiment in the Arab world. A group of Iraqi religious leaders went on television Sunday to call for Muslims not to collaborate with the United States. And a recent editorial in the Baath ruling party newspaper denounced what it said was America's double standard in its dealings with North Korea and Iraq. North Korea has declared it is working on a weapons program and the United States wants to resolve the issue through diplomacy, whereas Iraq says it has no weapons of mass destruction and the U.S. response is bombing, the editorial charged. Secretary of State Colin Powell talked about the perceived difference Sunday, saying that Iraq has already demonstrated its willingness to use mass destruction weapons, even on their own people. The secretary said the situation in North Korea is "serious" but "not a crisis." "They're two different cases ... very different situations," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Monday. "Each case has a different context. ... You can't just take a cookie cutter approach to the diplomacy or how to deal with them." Pentagon sources told CNN that between 50 to 100 warplanes this week will begin moving from bases in the United States and Europe to the Persian Gulf region. Between 20,000 to 30,000 troops will be dispatched to the region shortly. Powell said that the United States was "positioning ... military forces for whatever might be required" in Iraq, but in the event of a war, the country's "oil fields are the property of the Iraqi people." "If a coalition force goes into those oil fields, we want to protect those fields and make sure they're used to benefit the people of Iraq, not destroyed or damaged by the failing regime on the way out the door," Powell said.
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