Inspectors revisit 'baby milk' factory, question scientists

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.N. arms experts for the first time questioned scientists connected to Iraq's weapons programs and spent Monday touring a controversial site of the Gulf War -- a factory Iraq said produced baby milk but that the United States claimed made biological weapons.

Also, U.S. officials said Iraq shot down an unmanned U.S. surveillance drone over the country's southern no-fly zone. Iraqi television, quoting an unidentified military official, said the $3.7 million Predator drone left from neighboring Kuwait.

Iraq's deputy prime minister accused America of building up its forces in the Middle East as part of a plan to control the region.

"This is a strategic plan for a war ... that targets that whole Arab world," Tariq Aziz said.

U.S. critics of Iraq have been asking that U.N. weapons inspectors be allowed to interview Iraqi scientists in private in a bid to learn more about Baghdad's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs.

On Monday, officials from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said those interviews had begun. Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's chief spokesman, said the interviews went far beyond the "questioning of people as a matter of routine" by the foreign inspectors in the initial phase of their search in Iraq.

"We are now in a phase where those interviews are taking place, but we are not revealing when or how many or with whom," Gwozdecky said in Vienna, Austria.

However, he did say in reply to a question that inspectors were not exercising their authority to interview Iraqi scientists outside Iraq.

U.N. officials in New York and Baghdad said they were awaiting an Iraqi list of current and former scientists who worked on nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs. The list was expected by next week.

Ewan Buchanan, spokesman for the New York-based U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said officials were studying how to conduct the interviews, particularly in terms of providing security for the scientists and their families.

In Baghdad, weapons inspectors visited a facility Iraq insists is a baby milk factory but Washington claims was a biological weapons laboratory.

U.S. warplanes bombed the plant during the 1991 conflict and again in 1998 after the last U.N. weapons inspection teams left Iraq following Baghdad's alleged failure to cooperate.

The plant, located on the western outskirts of Baghdad in the town of Abu Ghraib, once bore a sign with the words "Baby Milk Factory" scrawled in English above the Arabic. Allied commanders insisted the factory was a legitimate military target.

At the rebuilt factory Monday, plant director Youssef Nouri Taher said inspectors asked about raw materials and the production process.

Iraqi officials said U.N. weapons inspectors sealed machinery in the plant during the mid-1990s. The plant is not producing milk now but would be able to if the machinery was unsealed, the officials said.

Inspectors continued their daily inspections by revisiting a military industrial facility at Al Fao. Last week, inspectors briefly were delayed getting into a guest house at the complex while officials, apparently taken by surprise, sought permission to let them enter.

A year ago, an Iraqi engineer who said he defected after having been arrested inside the country reported working for the Iraqi government's Military Industrialization Organization and an affiliated company, Al Fao.

In a New York Times interview conducted in December 2001 in Bangkok, Thailand, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri said he visited at least 20 sites he believed were associated with Iraq's chemical or biological programs and he had performed repair or construction work in nuclear weapons facilities.

Iraq repeatedly has insisted it is not hiding nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in violation of United Nations resolutions. Baghdad said recently it would not object to CIA personnel checking for weapons.

But U.N. inspectors have called Iraq's recent 12,000-page arms declaration wanting, while American and British officials have deemed it a lie.

President Bush already has declared Iraq in "material breach" of U.N. demands, a term that could trigger a declaration of war. Washington says it will double its military presence in the Gulf to 100,000 troops by next month and U.S. forces this past weekend staged their biggest exercises in Kuwait since the 1991 Gulf War.