How a 'leak' turned out to be an own goal

The extraordinary admission by the UN that it had warned Iraqi officials about a supposed surprise visit to a site will play directly into the hands of US hawks eager to portray weapons inspections as little more than going through the motions.

Neither will their suspicions be allayed by the way in which the news was revealed. When it emerged that the director of a military industrial complex had received advanced notice of the "no warning" raid, there were suggestions that UN security had been breached. A spokesman even said he had no idea how Iraqi officials at the Mother of All Battles company, in Yusoufiyyah, 10 miles south of Baghdad, knew that a monitoring team was coming.

But late last night came the admission that it was the UN itself that had told the Iraqis. This statement was more of a surprise than the inspection was ever going to be, and the reaction to all this in Washington is now nervously awaited.

UN weapons inspectors have completed searches of 10 sites in Iraq without apparently finding any evidence to back up claims by the US and Britain that some are being used in chemical, biological and nuclear programmes.

Another UN team undertook the first search of a "sensitive site" at the Balad military base, 48 miles north of Baghdad, where the Iraqi army says it carries out experiments and training in how to counter chemical and biological attacks. It is believed the inspectors may have been checking for atropine, a medicine that can be used to counter nerve agents, which, US authorities have claimed, was being imported in large quantities.

US officials maintain this may be a sign that President Saddam is planning to use nerve agents against any US-led attack and is stocking atropine to protect his own troops against "blowbacks". The Iraqis have strongly denied the claims.

The UN refused to say if any samples had been taken away. But after the inspection, Brigadier Karim Mohsen Alwan of the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, claimed the team had found nothing. Iraqi soldiers at the site appeared to have been caught unaware by the visit, and the site was "frozen" by monitors, barring anyone from entering or leaving.

The UN inspectors are not able to sweep their headquarters, the Canal Hotel, for bugs. As a result, all confidential discussions have to take place outdoors.

Iraqi "minders" accompany the inspectors, but they are told to follow UN vehicles without knowing the destination. A senior UN official said earlier that the Iraqis may have "guessed" the Mother of All Battles site was being targeted by the direction of the journey.

A number of the sites inspected had been named by US and Britain as places where Iraq is attempting to reactivate programmes for weapons of mass destruction. One site inspected last week was al-Tahadi, a factory in the north-eastern suburbs of Baghdad where, the US Senate intelligence committee was told at a hearing in February, a number of "the alumni of the Iraqi nuclear establishment" had been gathering.

But another US intelligence report, leaked to Washington newspapers, gave the wrong location for the plant, which, the report claimed, was being used for biological warfare experiments.

Another site visited was al-Rafah, 80 miles west of Baghdad where, Washington claims, the Iraqis have built a new and large missile-testing stand.