United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq have found 11 empty chemical warheads during an inspection of an ammunition storage depot today but a senior Iraqi official said the find is not linked to any prohibited weapons program.
UN spokesman Mr Hiro Ueki refused to speculate on the significance of the find at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage facility.
He said the discovery was made by a multidisciplinary team from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) during an inspection of the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area, "a large group of bunkers constructed in the late 1990s".
Ukhaider is 37 miles south of the southern city of Kerbala and was inspected on January 7th.
"During the course of their inspection, the team discovered 11 empty 122 mm chemical warheads and one warhead that requires further evaluation," Mr Ueki said in a statement.
"The warheads were in excellent condition and were similar to ones imported by Iraq during the late 1980s. The team used portable X-Ray equipment to conduct preliminary analysis of one of the warheads and collected samples for chemical testing," the statement said.
General Hossam Mohammed Amin, chief of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, said the UN find is not linked to any prohibited program of weapons of mass destruction.
Gen Amin, whose agency liaises with the inspectors, said: "it is neither chemical, neither biological. It is empty warheads. It is small artillery rockets. It is expired rockets, and they were forgotten without any intention to use them."
"They are not weapons of mass destruction, chemical or biological."
"They are just artillery rockets imported in 1986. Therefore they are expired, they cannot be used."
He added that the type of rockets found today "were declared ... to the UNSCOM [the predecessor to UNMOVIC] in 1996 and ... declared again" in Iraq's most recent inventory of its weapons programs, delivered to the UN Security Council last month.
Separately, inspectors visited the Baghdad homes of two scientists, taking one of them away with a box of documents.
Mr Faleh Hassan Hamza left with the arms experts after inspection of his villa in the northwestern Baghdad surburb of Al-Ghazalia. Mr Hamza, director general of Al-Razi, which is owned by the Iraqi Commission for Military Industrialisation, left with a large box stuffed with documents, the nature of which was unknown.
Inspectors also visited the residence of another scientist in the same street, Mr Shaker al-Juburi, who has ties to Iraq's former nuclear programme.
Experts also inspected a radio-television compound run by the armed Iranian opposition in Iraq, the People's Mujahedeen. The Mujahedeen have operated from Iraq since 1986, carrying out occasional attacks across the border in Iran.
AFPThe news comes just hours after US President George W Bush warned Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein that time was running out for Baghdad to comply with the UN demands to disarm.
"It's his choice to make. It's up to Saddam Hussein to do what the entire world has asked him to do," he said.
"So far the evidence hasn't been very good that he is disarming. And time is running out. At some point in time the United States' patience will run out."
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