Iraq objected Wednesday to U.N. weapons inspectors' surprise intrusion into one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces. The U.N. monitors countered that they're taking the right approach - navigating between Iraqi complaints and U.S. pressure for more "severe" inspections.
"We are getting results," said inspection team leader Demetrius Perricos.
Among other things, he reported that on a five-hour inspection Wednesday of a desert installation, the international arms experts secured about a dozen Iraqi artillery shells - previously known to be there - containing a powerful chemical weapon, the liquid agent mustard.
It was the first report of such armaments traced and controlled in the week-old round of new inspections.
Perricos' team and another paid unannounced visits to that key site and to the nerve center of Iraq's old nuclear weapons program, places that were bombed, searched and dismantled in the 1990s. The 2002 inspectors wanted to ensure that Baghdad's plans for ultimate weapons have not been revived.
It's the other things I am really curious about!
The U.N. PROCESS of verifying results, writing it up, passing it up stream for approval, further verification, further approval, further documention checks, passed to the Security Council, questioned and appealed by the Iraqi's ... ad nauseum and all set up to run out the clock on cool weather attacks before the spring heat arrives.