UN inspectors yesterday completed the destruction in Iraq of a large germ warfare plant used to fill bombs with such agents as anthrax and botulism.
In a UN video, Iraqi workers supervised by the UN inspectors were shown blowing up the alHakam factory, 80km south of Baghdad, bit by bit. They smashed equipment with bulldozers and packed up some substances in plastic bags.
"It is a dangerous site because it is especially designed for production of biological weapons," said Mr Rolf Ekeus, chairman of the UN Special Commission in charge of ridding Iraq of dangerous weapons, in the video.
Mr Ekeus is currently in Baghdad after Iraq last week said it would no longer allow the inspectors into some sensitive sites they suspected of housing clandestine weapons materials.
The al Hakam plant, which includes a score of large buildings spread out in the desert over 12km, was under suspicion by Mr Ekeus's team a year ago. It was built in 1988 and took a month to destroy.
Iraq at first maintained the complex did not exist. It then escorted local press to the site saying it was used to manufacture animal feed. In July and August 1995, Iraqi authorities admitted the plant was used, in connection with an offensive biological weapons programme.
This included deploying missile warheads and bombs with germs ready for use in the 1991 Gulf War.
Mr Charles Duelfer, deputy director of the commission, said 600,000 litres worth of agents were produced at al Hakam.
But he said blowing up the plant did not answer the question of what had happened to all the germ agents, which Iraq says had been destroyed earlier.
"We still have to account for the agents that were produced there," he said. Mr Duelfer and Mr Owen Hammond of Australia, a supervisor of the demolition, praised Iraqi workers for their Cooperation in carrying out the work.
Meanwhile, Iraqi and UN officials were to meet again, yesterday to resolve a crisis over Baghdad's refusal to allow weapons inspectors into other military bases.
Neither side gave any details of the talks' progress, but Iraqi media renewed their attacks on Mr Ekeus, accusing him of working for the US.