U.N. chief inspectors headed Saturday toward Baghdad to press for more cooperation from Iraq. "Iraq has not cooperated sufficiently with the United Nations weapons inspectors, and we will impress the seriousness of the situation to them," Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, said on arrival Saturday in Cyprus.
He is to be joined by ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the two will travel to the Iraqi capital Sunday.
Meanwhile, teams of U.N. inspectors headed out Saturday morning to visit suspected weapons sites. One group went to food warehouses belonging to the Trade Ministry in the central Baghdad district of al-Jameela.
The team examined a construction site inside the compound with at least two refrigerator trucks and a trailer, which site manager Nawal Nafa'a Fotohi identified as mobile food labs used to check government rations.
Other teams, according to AP, visited Baghdad University's science college and the University of Kufa, some 190 kilometers south of the Iraqi capital.
Inspectors also visited the Al-Tuwaitha complex, some 15 kilometers south of Baghdad, which was at the heart of Iraq's former nuclear program, and the chemical and explosives QaQa Company, also south of Baghdad.
Anti-war activists held rallies Saturday in Asia, Europe and the United States. In Damascus, tens of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the Syrian capital carrying anti-American and anti-Israeli banners, attacking U.S. support for the Jewish state.
"The American war on Iraq is a protection to the Zionist entity and an exhaustion of Arab oil," read one banner. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
