Iraq

U.N. arms inspectors unsure what's happening to sites

UNITED NATIONS - A number of sites in Iraq known to have contained equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been either cleaned out or destroyed, U.N. weapons inspectors said Monday.

The inspectors' report said they didn't know whether the items, which had been monitored by the United Nations, were at the sites during the U.S.-led war.

U.N. inspectors were pulled from Iraq just before the war began in March 2003 and the United States has refused to allow them to return.

"It is possible that some of the materials may have been removed from Iraq by looters of sites and sold as scrap," the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission said in its quarterly report to the Security Council.

UNMOVIC said its experts and a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was responsible for dismantling Iraq's nuclear program, were jointly investigating items from Iraq that were discovered in a scrap yard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam.

Through photographs taken during an initial IAEA investigation, UNMOVIC said it discovered that SA-2 engines used in Iraq's Al Samoud 2 banned missile program were among the scrap.

COLONIAL HEIGHTS, Va. - The Army's top supply commander said Monday that all American troops in Iraq are now equipped with bullet-resistant vests, after a shortage that led many soldiers to pay for costly body armor themselves.

As late as March, some soldiers headed for Iraq were still buying their own body armor. Gen. Paul Kern, commander of the Army Material Command, said the shortage eased after manufacturers stepped up production of the lifesaving vests.

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