U.N.’s Inspectors Renew Search for Iraqi Weaponry

A U.N. arms inspection team, barred by Baghdad from entering government ministries, completed its first day of searches Sunday without triggering a new standoff with Iraq.

“It was an inspection day, the first one. That is all it was,” Nikita Smidovich, head of the 22-member team, told reporters when the inspectors returned to their Baghdad hotel. “We went where we planned to go.”

Asked whether the team saw what it wanted to see, Smidovich said, “Yes.”

He declined to say whether the team tried to inspect any government ministries, put off limits to U.N. arms inspectors by Baghdad last Thursday, or whether the inspection site was in or outside the capital.

Asked about cooperation with Iraqi officials, Smidovich said: “It was a normal inspection day for us.”

He declined to say whether the inspectors found anything unexpected but said Iraqi officials treated American experts on the team no differently from the other members.

Smidovich, the first Russian to head a U.N. team in Iraq, said the arms experts will continue their mission today.

The team, which arrived Friday, was the first to enter Iraq since U.N. inspectors searched the Agriculture Ministry July 28 and 29 after a three-week standoff that drew threats of force from the United States. That was the gravest confrontation yet between the U.N. and Baghdad over the scrapping of Iraq’s weapons.

The U.N. inspectors are trying to ferret out missing details in all four areas of Iraq’s weapons programs--nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic--but the emphasis is on missile expertise.

Smidovich had planned to start work Saturday but had to wait a day because of a national holiday to mark the fourth anniversary of the end of Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran.