U.N. Inspectors Find No Scuds Hidden in Iraq

Having verified that Iraq has destroyed a “substantial” number of long-range missiles, a U.N. inspection team failed to find any hidden Scuds during searches of several military sites, the team leader said Sunday.

“We went to a military establishment to the north of Baghdad, where we carried out a very thorough inspection,” Derek Boothby said by satellite phone from Iraq’s capital.

He said that earlier in the team’s nine-day visit, it searched a big military base in Tikrit, President Saddam Hussein’s hometown, and made a surprise search at a Baghdad office building looking for records of missiles. It searched another site on Sunday, he said.

U.N. teams have made frequent trips from their regional headquarters in Bahrain to check Iraq’s compliance with the weapon destruction orders under terms of the Persian Gulf War cease-fire.

Hussein’s government has tried to obstruct the work on several occasions but backed down in the face of U.N. Security Council threats.

Iraq ended the most recent confrontation with the United Nations by agreeing to allow the destruction of missile-producing equipment, and it then said it had destroyed a large number of Scud missiles and other terror weapons last June.

The next real test of Iraq’s cooperation will be the Al Atheer industrial complex. U.N. officials say it is a key part of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program and have ordered that it be destroyed. A U.N. team is scheduled to fly to Baghdad on Sunday to begin dismantling the complex, which Iraq has insisted is devoted to civilian purposes.

In Sunday’s search, Boothby said the team did not find any evidence of missiles or any other arms that would violate Security Council orders requiring the destruction of Iraq’s missiles, chemical and biological weapons and nuclear warhead program.

Officials have estimated that Iraq obtained about 800 Scuds during the 1980s. Many were used during the Iran-Iraq War, and scores were fired at Saudi Arabia and Israel during the Gulf war.

CIA Director Robert M. Gates asserted Friday that Iraq is still hiding several hundred Scuds and other weapons.

Boothby’s 35-member team was sent to ensure the missile machinery was wrecked and check on the Iraqi claims about the missiles. It was to have left on Saturday, but stayed to visit the unidentified site Sunday.

In the course of the visit, he said the team supervised the demolition of nine long-range missile manufacturing and repair facilities. Some equipment was cut up with high-temperature torches and other machinery was crushed by bulldozers, he said.

He said that the team also inspected six sites containing “destroyed missiles and components” and that it would visit a seventh site on the way to the airport today.

“I can guarantee to you that it’s well and truly destroyed by Iraq. They blew it up with TNT. And it certainly is nothing more now than tangled wreckage,” he said.