Truth Elusive In Iraq Weapons Hunt

The U.N. inspectors returning to Baghdad can point to a long list of "kills" after seven years of weapons hunting in Iraq in the 1990s. But they also face, after four years on the sidelines, a nagging list of questions.

Did Iraq take advantage of their absence to resume developing longer-range missiles? Are the Iraqis rebuilding their shattered vision of a nuclear bomb? What happened to some chemicals? And what about those aluminum tubes?

The United Nations is embarking on months of difficult work in Iraq — from surprise pre-dawn calls on suspected weapons sites to long nights at computer keyboards and laboratory tables to analyze the findings.

Some questions will never be answered, whether because of flawed Iraqi paperwork, clever concealment, or simply the size of the task. But the record suggests these teams of international experts also will, in many cases, ferret out the truth, as U.N. arms experts did before.

Here's a look at where they'll be looking:

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Earlier inspection teams uncovered and demolished extensive facilities Iraq built in the 1980s to develop atomic bombs. A prize find was a complex 20 miles south of Baghdad where the Iraqis tested gas centrifuges, machines that "enrich" uranium as bomb material.

Satellite photos show new construction at that site, Al Furat, since U.N. inspectors pulled out of Iraq in 1998. In addition, the CIA says the Iraqis have tried to import aluminum tubes of a strength that might be used in centrifuges.

The inspectors are expected to revisit Al Furat, although they doubt they'll find any sophisticated enrichment capacity in Iraq after only a four-year absence. As for the tubes, some experts believe they were intended for non-nuclear uses. The man in charge of nuclear inspections, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei says he has been waiting for more solid information from U.S. authorities.

MISSILES

The U.N. Security Council forbids Iraq to have missiles with more than a 90-mile range.

The inspectors reported accounting in the 1990s for destruction of all but two of Iraq's 819 longer-range missiles. A recent U.S. intelligence report speculated the Iraqis may actually have a dozen or so of these old models, assembled from odd parts unaccounted for.

More concretely, reconnaissance photos show rebuilding at the Al Mamoun plant 30 miles southwest of Baghdad, designed to produce solid propellant for longer-range missiles and destroyed by U.N. teams. Photos also show a new missile test facility at Al Rafah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad, that the U.S. report says must be for longer-range weapons.

Such new construction is an invitation for an early visit by the inspectors.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

The program to build chemical weapons was large; Iraq used them in its war with Iran in the 1980s.

The U.N. experts reported that by 1998 they had destroyed 809 pieces of equipment used to make such weapons — almost 10 times the number wrecked by U.S. bombing in the 1991 Gulf War. They also destroyed tons of the deadly chemicals, and much of whatever they missed probably has deteriorated into harmlessness.

The inspectors will be especially interested in signs of VX — a lethal nerve agent. In the 1990s they couldn't account for about one-fifth of the hundreds of tons of VX precursors — the weapon's constituent chemicals — obtained by Iraq.

Again, satellite images will lead the inspectors in clear directions: to a rebuilt chlorine and phenol plant, for example, at the former military production site of Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad. These chemicals have civilian uses, but also are precursors for weapons.

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

Developing deadly microbes, such as anthrax, for military use can be a relatively small, hard-to-detect enterprise. Thanks to an Iraqi general's defection, however, U.N. inspectors in the 1990s found and demolished Iraq's main facility for bioweapons research and production. They also disabled related equipment elsewhere, such as at the Al Dawrah animal vaccine plant outside Baghdad.

Recent renovation at Al Dawrah, ostensibly to make vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease, might be tied to biological weapons, the U.S. intelligence dossier suggested.

Such suspicions, again, are enough to send inspectors back for a look. But dual-use technology can often be switched on short notice between civilian and military purposes, and Al Dawrah in the end may remain one of those unanswered questions.

In a wrap-up report in 1999, the inspectors conceded a half-dozen times it was "impossible" to verify major items — one reason the U.N. plan envisions not just weapons hunting today, but low-key U.N. monitoring for years to come, a warden's role in Iraq long after the snap inspections end.