UN arms experts resumed their searches of suspect sites in Iraq today, hours after Baghdad's arms declaration arrived at the UN headquarters in New York.
Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) drove to al-Tuweitha nuclear facility, 20 km south of the Iraqi capital. IAEA experts inspected Tuweitha Nuclear Research Centre twice last week.
It was not known why they returned.
An Iraqi official indicated yesterday that Baghdad might have once have come close to developing a nuclear bomb.
Mr Amir al-Saadi, an adviser to President Saddam Hussein, said Iraq handed over the full documentation on its nuclear programme to the IAEA as part of the arms declaration mandated by the UN Security Council.
Asked how close Iraq had come to making a bomb, Mr Saadi said: "We have the complete documentation from design to all the other things. We haven't reached the final assembly of a bomb nor tested it.
"It is for the IAEA to judge how close we were," he said, adding: "If I tell you we were close, it is subjective."
Tuweitha is the location of the Osirak reactor bombed by Israel in 1981. Several tonnes of uranium have been under seal by the IAEA at Tuweitha since 1998.
Another team from the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) drove to a large military industrial complex -- Al-Tariq General Company -- some 90 km (55 miles) northwest of Baghdad and near the town of Fallujah.
The site, known as Fallujah 2 and run by Iraq's Military Industrialisation Commission, is well guarded with a large portrait of Saddam at the main gate.
The inspectors split up into small groups and checked the various structures in the compound as well as rusting large tanks and containers. They spent four-and-a-half hours there.