Dozens of U.N. arms experts combed at least six suspect sites for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Thursday. Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drove to Al Nidaa Public Company in Zafaraniyah, a suburb in southwest Baghdad. The facility, run by Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission, produces metal molds. A large portrait of President Saddam Hussein stared down from the entrance to the factory, guarded by soldiers manning a heavy machinegun.

Teams from the IAEA and the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) targeted five other sites around the country, Iraqi officials said. They said biological warfare inspectors had gone to a disused factory owned by the Arab Company for Antibiotics near Suweirah, 38 miles southeast of Baghdad. A missile team visited a test pad near Ramadi, about 75 miles northwest of Baghdad. Nuclear inspectors made their second trip in as many days to the Ibn Sina plant, a former uranium enrichment facility 25 miles north of Baghdad, and also went to the Mu'tassim factory in Jurf Sakhr, 25 miles south of Baghdad.

The Iraqi officials said U.N. experts headed for al-Rasheed factory, whose location and nature was not immediately known.
Iraq denies possessing banned weapons.

It submitted a 12,000-page dossier on its arms programs to the United Nations last Saturday in line with a Security Council resolution threatening serious consequences if it failed to cooperate with the inspectors.

The experts, in the third week of their mission since returning to Iraq after a four-year absence, have intensified their inspections since the dossier was handed over.

The teams visited six sites Wednesday -- including one newly declared facility -- and completed a two-day check on a uranium extraction plant near the Syrian border.

PHOTO CAPTION

A member of a U.N. inspection team records the scene on film before beginning a search for weapons of mass destruction inside an Iraqi factory 58 miles west of Baghdad, Dec. 12, 2002. Dozens of U.N. arms experts combed at least six suspect sites for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq on Thursday. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)