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New team, technology heading to Iraq
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The new U.N. weapons inspectors will pick up where their predecessors left off in Iraq in 1998. But there will be some big differences -- both in personnel and technology. An advance logistical team for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or UNMOVIC, is scheduled to arrive Monday in Baghdad. While the previous group was made up of experts mostly from the United States, Canada, European nations, Australia and New Zealand, the new team will have representatives from 40 nations, said Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. A former weapons inspector predicted it would take weeks for the new team -- 220 inspectors, with 50 more in training -- to get up to speed. "Most of the inspectors, even though they have technical skills, are not experienced in conducting inspections, and they'll be on a very steep learning curve," said former U.N. weapons inspector Jonathan Tucker. He said the new inspectors have been undergoing a five-week training program to learn about Iraq, how the previous team operated and what they are likely to find when they arrive in the Iraqi capital. The inspection team must report back to the U.N. Security Council by February 21. Experts have said finding evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction will be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Iraq is about the size of California or France. (Suspected biological weapons sites) Adding to the difficulty are the increased number of presidential palaces Iraq has built in the four years since U.N. inspections were halted. Under the U.N. resolution that Iraq agreed to Wednesday, the inspectors will have access to presidential palaces and surrounding sites that were off-limits to previous inspectors. Richard Butler, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, said his team had information that Iraq had hidden illegal weapons material under those buildings. "In those presidential sites, we determined there were 1,100 buildings, some of them as large as Giants or Yankee Stadium, really big warehouses," Butler said. "We also knew that under some of the palaces as such, not just sites, there were subterranean caverns, there were storage areas below the ground. The total area of the sites were some 50 square kilometers. (Palace locations) "The inspectors will need to be able to go below the ground," he said. "At the end of my time, we were starting to use ground-penetrating radar. They're going to need that; they're going to need to be able to literally look underground." Longtime inspectors said the new U.N. resolution will force Iraq to give up its old policy of "cheat and retreat." "They'd cheat with a lie about what they held, and they would retreat when they were confronted with the evidence and would come up with a new lie," said former U.N. weapons inspector Tim Trevan. U.S. intelligence officials said they will be providing UNMOVIC with substantial information to help them look for weapons of mass destruction -- sites they should check, individuals they should interview and more. Experienced inspectors agree. "They will have more sophisticated satellite surveillance, including commercial satellite systems that are less sensitive," Tucker said. "They will perhaps have airborne aerial surveillance, such as helicopters or even the Predator-type unmanned aerial vehicles. "Those systems can hover for many hours, up to 24 hours over a location, and for example, if there is an inspection under way at a site, they could monitor what is going on." The White House already has released some satellite photographs that U.S. officials said show construction has resumed on a building originally meant to house a centrifuge enrichment facility -- part of the process of building a nuclear bomb. Then there are dual-use facilities -- such as a heavy industry complex north of Baghdad, recently shown to reporters. The Iraqis deny allegations that some of the machines may have been used to produce equipment for a nuclear weapon. Before inspectors arrive at such complexes, they will be able to examine CD-ROMs the Iraqis recently turned over containing their version of what has gone on at potential dual-use facilities in the last few years. Improved biological and chemical weapon detection technology also will aid inspectors.
"They will have sophisticated detection devices, for example, for biological weapons that can take samples and analyze them rapidly to determine their identity -- whether Iraq, for example, is producing anthrax at a vaccine plant," Tucker said. A device such as a hand-held germ analyzer called the "Hanna," developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, could be used by inspectors. It can analyze an air sample or a swab and determine in a matter of minutes whether anthrax, plague or some innocuous substance is present in an area. "It's the difference between doing an analysis in an hour or even a day, compared to sending samples back to the United States or somewhere else, where it might take a day or two or three or a week to return the samples," said Page Stoutland, deputy director of counterterrorism at Lawrence Livermore. CNN Correspondents David Ensor, Richard Roth and Rusty Dornin contributed to this report.
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