US: In his speech to the UN last week, Colin Powell identified Iraqi sites where, he said, suspicious activities were taking place. Two days later, John Daniszewski went to see them. This is what he found
After Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council, the Iraq government said it has something it wanted to show the world media.
So Iraqi officials escorted scores of reporters and photographers to two of the top-secret sites mentioned in Mr Powell's indictment and let them scramble up, down and around the facilities.
Managers at both sites said Mr Powell had misconstrued the evidence entirely. They vehemently denied having any banned equipment or operations and pointed out that since November, they had been under close monitoring and inspection by the UN teams that have not found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
As is so often the case in Iraq, it was impossible for the journalists at the sites, both fenced off and protected by heavy sand berms, to know anything conclusively. It was also clear that Iraq still puts considerable effort into building better rockets and missiles, even if they do - as officials say - obey the requirements that no weapon exceeds a range of 150 km, about 90 miles.
Satellite imagery from the two sites - the Al-Rafa'h liquid-fuel rocket-engine testing station in Falajah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad, and the Mutasim missile assembly plant in Al-Musayyib, 30 miles south of the capital - were prime exhibits in Mr Powell's dramatic address to the UN Security Council.
At Al-Rafa'h, Mr Powell alleged that the Iraqis were in the process of constructing a larger test pad in preparation for developing powerful long-range rockets which would exceed the 150-km limit and could conceivably threaten neighbouring countries by delivering banned chemical or biological weapons.
In the satellite photo, he showed the new structure, about five times larger than the test pad it is to replace and noted that a new roof has since been put up over it so that satellites could not see what was going on below.
For the Al-Musayyib plant, he presented a satellite photo taken on November 10th of what he said was the loading of a cargo truck with missile components. "Why would Iraq suddenly move equipment of this nature before inspections?" he asked.
In Al-Rafa'h, plant manager Mr Ali Jassem offered a simple explanation for the size of the new test pad. It was designed, he said, to test the rocket engine lying down rather than standing straight up, so that the blast from the test would be pointed away from the technicians and workers for greater safety if something went wrong.
"How can we be blamed for anything?" he asked. "The inspectors have been here five times since November 27th. They have seen the blueprints. They have seen our plans. They have found no problem with it. They were satisfied by everything."
The inspectors had been at the site just one day before Mr Powell's speech, he added. The new test pad had never been used, he said, because it still lacked measuring equipment which Iraq has had a hard time acquiring due to UN sanctions.
The rocket-testing facility has been bombed twice, in 1991 and 1998, Mr Jassem said. Photographers who ambled over to some crumpled rockets lying derelict in one corner of the site found them shading a watermelon patch.
At the Al-Musayyib plant, the factory chief, Mr Kareem Jabbar Youssef, said the factory was involved in assembling and refurbishing solid-fuel Fattah rockets - seven-meter long weapons carrying warheads packed with explosives. There have never been, he insisted, banned chemical or biological substances.
Mr Jabbar said the plant worked around the clock, except Fridays (the Sabbath). Completed rockets were shipped on to the army while faulty components were returned to their originating plants as a matter of routine.
"We were very surprised when we heard that Powell said our site was evidence of illegal activities," said Mr Jabbar, noting that the inspectors had visited the site 10 times since November and had verified that the missiles assembled there were permissible. Missiles stacked up in front of the building bore UN stickers showing they had already been inventoried.
The photo which Mr Powell showed the Security Council, he said, was taken of a truck which had carried 10 defective components back to a sister factory. The very same tractor-trailer was now parked right outside the door, he added.