U.N. arms experts checked at least seven suspect banned weapons sites across Iraq Tuesday, ranging from a military base to a technology college. With no Christmas Eve respite for the 109 inspectors based in Baghdad, a chemical weapons team from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) headed to an undisclosed site in the south of the country.

Iraqi officials said the team had gone past the city of Kut and toward the port city of Basra. It was the furthest the inspectors had gone south of Baghdad since they resumed inspections on November 27 after a four-year gap.

Another chemical team visited a site 28 miles south of Baghdad, the Iraqi officials said.

UNMOVIC ballistics experts inspected an undisclosed military base, a military plant on the outskirts of Baghdad and another site 30 km south of the capital, the officials said. Biological teams were inspecting a veterinary school in Abu Ghreib, 16 miles west of Baghdad, and a foodstuff site in the outskirts of the capital, they said.

Teams from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the Salahuddin electronics company and the Technology University in Baghdad.

The IAEA said Monday it had begun interviewing Iraqi scientists and was making arrangements to take them out of Iraq if needed as part of its hunt for weapons of mass destruction.

The experts have carried out around 150 inspections since they resumed work four weeks ago. Some facilities have been visited several times.

IAEA inspectors are also monitoring air and water in Iraq to check for radioactive isotopes. A team has sampled 27 sites along rivers and lakes and at sewage outlets belonging to industrial facilities, a U.N. spokesman said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Members of a biological weapons team from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) search a baby milk factory in Abu Ghreib, 15 miles west of Baghdad December 23,2002. U.N. arms experts searched the plant which, destroyed by Western allies in the Gulf War and then rebuilt, became a potent symbol of the propaganda war over alleged weapons of mass destruction. (Suhaib Salem/Reuter