U.S. officials said Iraq shot down an unmanned U.S. surveillance drone over the country's southern no-fly zone. Iraqi television, quoting an unidentified military official, said the DLRS. 3.7 million Predator drone left from neighboring Kuwait.
The incident is the first apparent downing of a U.S. aircraft in the no-fly zone since a new U.N. disarmament resolution was passed in November. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers said he did not view the incident as an escalation of the dispute with Iraq over U.N. disarmament demands.

Myers told reporters in Washington the newest incident was in keeping with previous Iraqi hostility toward international coalition aircraft. "I do not see it as an escalation," he said.

Iraq, which does not recognize the no-fly zones set up after the 1991 Gulf War, charges that Western airplanes have attacked civilian targets and killed innocent people. The Pentagon denies that.

UN ARMS EXPERTS QUESTION IRAQI SCIENTISTS

Also, U.N. arms experts for the first time questioned scientists connected to Iraq's weapons programs and spent Monday touring a controversial site of the Gulf War - a factory Iraq said produced baby milk but that the United States claimed made biological weapons.

U.S. critics of Iraq have been asking that U.N. weapons inspectors be allowed to interview Iraqi scientists in private in a bid to learn more about Baghdad's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs. On Monday, officials from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency said those interviews had begun.

Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's chief spokesman, said the interviews went far beyond the "questioning of people as a matter of routine" by the foreign inspectors in the initial phase of their search in Iraq.

"We are now in a phase where those interviews are taking place, but we are not revealing when or how many or with whom," Gwozdecky said in Vienna, Austria.

However, he did say in reply to a question that inspectors were not exercising their authority to interview Iraqi scientists outside Iraq.

U.N. officials in New York and Baghdad said they were awaiting an Iraqi list of current and former scientists who worked on nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs. The list was expected by next week.

Ewan Buchanan, spokesman for the New York-based U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said officials were studying how to conduct the interviews, particularly in terms of providing security for the scientists and their families.

INSPECTORS CONTINUE THEIR DAILY INSPECTIONS

Inspectors continued their daily inspections by revisiting a military industrial facility at Al Fao. A year ago, an Iraqi engineer who said he defected after having been arrested inside the country reported working for the Iraqi government's Military Industrialization Organization and an affiliated company, Al Fao.

In a New York Times interview conducted in December 2001 in Bangkok, Thailand, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri said he visited at least 20 sites he believed were associated with Iraq's chemical or biological programs and he had performed repair or construction work in nuclear weapons facilities.

MILITARY BUILD UP CONTINUES

The USS aircraft carrier, Constellation has meanwhile arrived in the Gulf region, Observers have noticed that aircraft carrier that may launch the first strikes in a war with Iraq played a key role in a murky series of events 40 years ago that led to full-scale U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The US top military commander, Richard Myres told reporters in Doha on Friday that the United States will go on deploying more forces to the Gulf to keep Iraq under pressure to disarm, but it has yet to set a date for any assault.

In Baghdad, Iraq's deputy prime minister on Monday, accused America of building up its forces in the Middle East as part of a plan to control the region.

"This is a strategic plan for a war ... that targets the whole Arab world," Tariq Aziz said.

Aziz was speaking during an emergency meeting of the Arab solidarity committee with Iraq in Baghdad, on Monday, December 23, 2002.

PHOTO CAPTION
A U.S. military unmanned Predator aircraft was presumed lost on December 23, 2002 after being fired on by an Iraqi military aircraft in the southern no-fly zone of Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said. The incident is the first apparent downing of a U.S. aircraft in the no-fly zone, and is certain to escalate tensions over U.N. disarmament demands of Iraq. A Predator is seen being prepared for flight in Indian Springs, Nevada in this November 9, 2001 file photo. (U.S. Air Force/Reuter