U.N. Inspectors Confirm Iraqis Destroyed, Buried Some Scuds

A U.N. team of ballistic missile experts has confirmed that Iraq destroyed and buried a number of Scud missiles and related weaponry, team leader Derek Boothby said Monday.

Boothby said that the team saw destroyed ballistic missiles and components that go into their guidance systems at three sites and that others had been buried and are being excavated for inspection.

“There are quite a few places,” Boothby said by satellite telephone shortly after returning from the field on his second day of a mission to verify Iraq’s weekend disclosures on its stock of mass destruction weapons.

In Washington, President Bush reacted to Boothby’s announcement by saying that the Baghdad government of Saddam Hussein has “moved in the right direction” toward complying with U.N. resolutions to disclose and destroy its weapons of mass destruction.

“I think our firmness has now caused them to back down once again,” Bush told a television interviewer.

Bowing to world pressure after a U.N. showdown with Iraqi Deputy Premier Tarik Aziz at the Security Council, Iraq’s delegate to the United Nations last Friday said substantial quantities of weapons of mass destruction were destroyed in June.

Boothby’s 35-member team went to Baghdad on Saturday to verify the Iraqi statements, which have forestalled possible military intervention from the United States and Britain.

The team leader said he visited one site south of Baghdad on Sunday and two north of Baghdad on Monday.

Boothby would not specify the numbers of the long-range missiles that he hopes to count in the wreckage.