Security blow as base chief is tipped off

United Nations 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 of them are being used in Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear programmes.

However, there was concern yesterday that the security of the mission may have been breached after the director of a military industrial complex revealed he had received an hour's notice of the supposed "no warning" raid by the inspectors.

The UN insisted last night that its intelligence was safe, and that it intended to continue with the searches. But a spokesman admitted he had no idea how Iraqi officials at the Mother of All Battles company in Yusoufiyyah, 10 miles south of Baghdad, knew a monitoring team was coming.

Another UN team undertook the first search of a "sensitive site" yesterday 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 civilian medication that can be used to counter nerve agents which, US authorities have claimed, were being imported recently 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 inspec-tion, Brigadier Karim Mohsen Alwan from the Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate, which liaises with the inspectors, claimed the team had found nothing.

Iraqi soldiers at the site appeared to have been caught unawares by the visit and the site was "frozen" at the direction of the monitors, barring anyone from entering or leaving.

The UN inspectors will not be able to sweep their headquarters, the Canal Hotel, for bugs suspected to have been put in by the Iraqi regime during their four-year absence. As a result, all confidential discussions have to take place outdoors.

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

A number of the sites visited by the UN had been named by the US and British governments as places where Saddam Hussein is attempting reactivate his weapons of mass destruction programme. Some were contained in the "Blair Dossier", produced by Downing Street in September amid heavy publicity.

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

Among other sites visited were Al Rafah, a military and industrial complex 80 miles west of Baghdad where, Washington claims, the Iraqis have built a new, large missile testing stand.