U.N. arms experts swooped on a newly declared site near Baghdad Wednesday, saying it was among locations disclosed by Iraq in its mammoth weapons declaration.Inspections resumed across Iraq a day after the United States threatened possible nuclear retaliation if its forces or allies were attacked with doomsday weapons.

Teams of inspectors, escorted by Iraqi officials, drove from their Baghdad headquarters to five sites as their hunt for Iraq's alleged banned arsenal picked up pace in its third week.

One team arrived at the Karamah complex in Taji, six miles north of Baghdad.

"The site we are going to this morning is one of the new sites that was given in the declaration and we need your help to get us there at this point," William Jolley, head of one U.N. inspection team, told an accompanying Iraqi official.

Jolley was speaking within earshot of reporters outside a walled compound called the "Strategic Storage Unit," according to a sign at the entrance, operated by Karamah Public Company.

The inspectors parked one of their white vehicles across the main gate to block access while they were inside. Taji houses complexes suspected of past involvement in Iraq's biological warfare and ballistic missile programs.

On December 2, weapons inspectors visited another Karamah complex in the Wazireyah industrial district of Baghdad.

One of the cars in the U.N. convoy Wednesday was involved in an accident with a civilian Iraqi car a few hundred meters (yards) from the Karamah compound. After the driver of the Iraqi car protested, the U.N. car stayed behind. Police later arrived. U.N. experts checked four other locations: Ibn Sina nuclear site in Tarmiya 20 miles northwest of Baghdad, Tuweitha nuclear site 12 miles south of Baghdad, a biological site at Amriyah 28 miles to the southwest, and Fateh chemical site on the city's outskirts.

Inspectors who had spent the night at a phosphate facility at al-Qaem, 400 km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad -- said to have produced refined uranium ore -- resumed work Wednesday.

Al-Qaem is the furthest the inspectors have traveled from Baghdad.

About two dozen U.N. arms inspectors arrived in Iraq on Tuesday, bringing the total to about 70. U.N. sources said most of the inspectors were out in the field Wednesday.

NUCLEAR OPTION

The United States raised the temperature in its confrontation with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction, saying in a strategy document that it could even go nuclear if such weapons were used against its forces or its allies.

"The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force -- including through resort to all our options -- to the use of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies," the document said.

U.S. officials said the passage on nuclear deterrence was not a change in policy but had been added to the document, the first update since 1993, to put more emphasis on the role of deterrence against a weapons of mass destruction attack.

Iraq accused the United States of looking for an excuse for war by seizing control from the United Nations of distribution of the 12,000-page declaration of Baghdad's weapons programs.

The White House said the accusation was "laughable," but Security Council members such as Norway and Syria -- who will be given only an edited copy of the document -- said they were being treated as second-class powers.

At the United Nations, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said he hoped to have an assessment of the Iraqi arms declaration next week after distributing an edited version of the document to the full 15-member Security Council.

The dossier, which is supposed to give a complete account of Iraq's past and present weapons programs, was demanded by the Security Council as part of its tough Resolution 1441, requiring Iraq to disarm or face serious consequences.

The United States has built up forces in the region and held exercises in preparation for military action in case Iraq breaches the U.N. resolution.

The Baghdad press slammed Washington for acquiring a copy of the dossier before any of the other four permanent members of the Security Council and suggested a sinister U.S. intent.

"We don't rule out that the United States will distort its contents in order to find an excuse for a new aggression on Iraq," the ruling Baath Party newspaper al-Thawra said.

"The way the United States seized the dossier shows how foolish and savage it is," it said in a front-page editorial.


PHOTO CAPTION

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan (L) and chief arms inspector Hans Blix speak to the media after a luncheon meeting with the members of the Security Council at U.N. headquarters in New York, December 10, 2002. U.N. member countries, including Norway and Syria, assailed the United Nations over the Iraq weapons dossier, accusing the world body of favoring the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia while relegating others to 'B' class membership.' (Mike Segar/Reuter