Scores of U.N. arms experts swooped down on at least three sites near Baghdad on Monday, a day after Iraq said it had no secret weapons to hide.Iraqi officials said a biological weapons team from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) spent two hours at what the officials described as a closed baby milk plant in Abu Ghreib, 25 km (16 miles) west of Baghdad.

Youssef Taher, chief of the facility, said the plant closed three years ago due to the high cost of producing milk locally compared to importing it.

He told reporters after the visit the inspectors asked about the production process, raw materials and chemicals that had been used before it was shut down.

"It was an ordinary visit and we answered all their questions," Taher said, adding that the plant had been visited by previous inspection teams. He did not say what banned material the plant had been suspected of producing.

An UNMOVIC chemical team inspected the Ibn Bitar animal vaccination facility some 10 km (six miles) north of the capital, they said. Another team was at the headquarters of Faw Engineering Company, which is run by Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission.

Iraq, which has pledged full cooperation with the inspectors, insists it has nothing to hide.

Amir al-Saadi, one of President Saddam Hussein's top advisers, said on Sunday that U.N. inspections over the past four weeks had shown that U.S. and British charges that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction were "lies and baseless."
He invited the United States to send in the CIA .

An Iraqi government newspaper said on Monday President Bush  was using lies to justify a war against Iraq.

"The administration of little Bush is launching a mad campaign based on lies and accusations in order to divert public attention from reality and find excuses for an aggression against Iraq," the ruling Baath Party newspaper al-Thawra said in a front-page editorial.

"The U.S. administration believes that its economic and military superiority and might could be employed to escalate its aggressive dispute with Iraq," it said.

A U.S. official said the campaign to rid Saddam of any weapons of mass destruction was entering its final phase as Iraq appeared "not to have made the strategic choice" to renounce such weapons.

PHOTO CAPTION

General Amir al-Saadi, adviser to President Saddam Hussein , speaks during a press conference in Baghdad December 22,2002. Iraq said on Sunday it was ready to answer any questions raised by the United States and Britain on its arms declaration, and would allow the CIA  to come and identify suspect sites for weapons inspectors. (Akram Salah/Reuters)