UN team uses notes and mime to beat the bugs

They gathered around a table at 3.55 in the afternoon, poring over a map, pointing at routes and locations, miming and passing scribbled notes to each other. The first landmark inspection of Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction in four years was planned in silence, because President Saddam may have been listening.

The UN team have cleared the pigeons, the mice, the dirt and the dust from the second-floor offices of their headquarters, the Canal Hotel in Baghdad. But they have yet to clear out the bugs they suspect the Iraqis have planted. So all confidential discussions about their mission has to be written or held out in the garden, rain or shine.

The first inspections, on Wednesday, began under intense international media interest, and chaos. The Iraqi regime had invited journalists to monitor the monitors, and they were happy to oblige.

More than 150 reporters, photographers and cameramen, in 40 vehicles, chased them all over Baghdad and beyond. Cars crashed into each other, and bewildered pedestrians jumped to safety.

The searches at Al Rafah, a military and industrial complex 80 miles west of Baghdad, and Al-Tahadi, a factory in the north-eastern suburbs of Baghdad claimed by the US to be part of Iraq's nuclear programme, did not yield any significant evidence.

But neither Dimitri Perricos, the Greek head of Unmovic (the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) team, nor Jacques Baute, the Frenchman leading the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) contingent had expected anything early in their mission.

"We were polite and to the point in what we wanted," Mr Baute said. "They co-operated fully, and the whole thing was conducted in a friendly manner. It is not our job to antagonise the Iraqis." After the three-hour and 20-minute inspection, the UN left and the Iraqis let journalists inside the factory, but only to a shed, for 15 minutes. The director, Heythan Mehmood, in a shiny grey suit, stroked his moustache and assured everyone he had nothing to hide; he was simply making machine parts.

Mr Perricos, whose enthusiasm and looks belie his 67 years, had led the first UN inspection, then for the IAEA, into Iraq in 1991. In the years that followed, the monitoring process stuttered, the UN accusing Iraq of subterfuge and the Iraqis claiming the inspectors were spying for America and Israel.

"This time we have the most advanced equipment available," Mr Perricos said. "The Iraqis know that, and they also know a 'material breach' may lead to war. This time it is a very different game." The inspections continued the next day at an animal vaccine factory and a munitions facility in Baghdad. Samples were taken from the Al-Dawrah vaccine plant, closed by a UN team in 1996.

"[Then] the Iraqis had tried to hide the existence of their biological programme. Then when Hussein Kamal [Saddam's son-in-law] defected, they tried damage-limitation by directing us to a sheep farm where we found incriminating documents. Maybe, this time, it will be in a camel farm."