'Monitoring net' ready to scour Iraq for weapons

NEW YORK -- With four years of tidy-up time since weapons inspectors left Iraq, finding remnants of outlawed arms in a country the size of California would meet anyone's idea of a tough job.

But advances in technology have given inspectors from the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency the ability to quickly sniff out telltale microbes or molecules that could signify chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

"Sensors have gotten much more sensitive over the last four years," said Ewen Buchanan, chief spokesman for the inspection team, which is to return to Iraq on Nov. 27 after being ousted in 1998. "A lot of equipment that might've required a whole room has been shrunk and is more usable in the field."

In the 1990s, UN inspectors dismantled Iraq's nuclear program and destroyed stocks of chemical and biological weapons and longer-range missiles forbidden by postwar U.N. resolutions.

But some weapons are believed to have survived -- or been rebuilt.

A detective's intuition

The 100 or so inspectors -- backed by a tough U.N. Security Council resolution -- plan to ferret out any remaining arms by draping Iraq in a surveillance net that knits together particle detectors, satellite imagery, ground-penetrating radar, sensors and cameras that beam live video back to Vienna.

Most important, experts say, is knowing where to point the gadgets.

Inspectors will need a detective's intuition, prescient intelligence and tips from Iraqi scientists and defectors. They'll also need to be able to recognize what, say, a Scud missile's turbo pump looks like, Buchanan said.

"We can assume Iraqis have moved all sensitive pieces of evidence," said former U.N. inspector Victor Mizin. "Without some data provided by the government, the inspections won't find anything meaningful."

Still, inspectors are bringing in plenty of high-tech sleuthing gear, all paid for -- like the entire inspection process -- by the sale of Iraqi oil, Buchanan said.

The IAEA's 20 nuclear weapons inspectors will scout sites with gamma radiation detectors mounted on helicopters or held in the hand, said Peter Rickwood, a spokesman for the IAEA in Vienna.

The agency owns more than a hundred analyzers like the fieldSPEC by Germany's Target Systemelectronic, a handheld scanner that can detect radioactive isotopes like plutonium-239 or uranium-233.

An alloy detector

IAEA inspectors will also wield a portable sensor known as the Ranger, developed by Quantrad Sensors of Madison, Wis. It uses X-ray fluorescence to pick out alloys useful in nuclear weapons.

While the IAEA tracks nuclear items, the UN inspectors will seek banned missile components and the remnants of President Saddam Hussein's biological arsenal -- which included anthrax and botulinum toxin -- and chemical agents sarin, VX and mustard gas.

One useful item, ground-penetrating radar, might be used to reveal buried weapons and underground bunkers, officials said.

In previous inspections, the radar found buried missile parts that had been smuggled from Russia, Mizin said.

One handheld scanner that will probably find its way into Iraq is the $9,000 Chemical Agent Monitor, or CAM, made by Smiths Detection, a British defense contractor. The four-pound device uses ion mobility spectrometry -- the same technology used in airports to find traces of explosives or drugs on luggage.

Inspectors seeking pathogens will probably use portable detectors like Idaho Technology's $55,000 R.A.P.I.D. scanner. The machines can detect nine different bioweapons in about 20 minutes and only need a single microorganism to work.