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UNSCOM & IAEA inspections continue




     Iraq lets U.N. experts check monitoring
     equipment 

     By Hassan Hafidh 

     BAGHDAD, Nov 2  - Iraq has allowed a
     United Nations team to visit Iraqi weapons sites to maintain
     surveillance equipment, a U.N. official said on Monday. 

     Caroline Cross, special assistant to the director of the Baghdad
     Monitoring and Verification Centre, also said that teams from
     the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had gone
     out to sites for a second successive day. 

     "A technical team from UNSCOM (the U.N. Special
     Commission disarming Iraq) has gone out to maintain
     monitoring equipment," Cross told Reuters. 

     "They have IMD officials to go along with them," she said.
     The Iraqi Monitoring Directorate is the Iraqi body liaising
     with UNSCOM. 

     Iraq said on Saturday it was halting all cooperation with
     UNSCOM inspectors and monitors until the Security Council
     reviewed the lifting of sanctions and removed Richard Butler,
     the chairman of UNSCOM, which is in charge of scrapping
     Iraq's chemical and biological weapons. 

     But Baghdad said the Vienna-based IAEA, the U.N. watchdog
     for nuclear weapons, could continue its monitoring work in
     Iraq. 

     "IAEA teams have gone out to monitor sites as usual," Cross
     said. 

     UNSCOM and the IAEA maintain surveillance cameras in
     hundreds of Iraqi sites suspected of producing weapons of
     mass destruction. 

     Cross said it would be some time before instructions came
     from UNSCOM headquarters on what to do next. 

     The Security Council has unanimously condemned Iraq's
     move and demanded that Baghdad end its non-cooperation
     "immediately and unconditionally". Iraq on Sunday rejected
     the council's condemnation. 

     Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz said on Sunday Baghdad
     would not back down on its decision, no matter what the rest
     of the world threatened to do in retaliation. It had already
     decided in August, at the start of the latest stand-off, not to
     allow the U.N. experts to inspect any new sites. 

     The Security Council has entrusted UNSCOM and the IAEA
     with verifying that Iraq has destroyed its weapons of mass
     destruction so that international sanctions imposed for its
     1990 invasion of Kuwait can be lifted. 



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