Olivia Bosch, now a Visiting Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said today that military, chemical and biological experts were necessary on the team, but that accountants and auditors, as with the Enron investigation, are needed to examine the procurement process.
She said that the paper trail for the purchase of potential components or ingredients of weapons would be an important focus. "They could look through thousands of receipts, so it's very much like a forensic exercise."
There was no process for the Iraqi Government to vet inspectors, she said, but Iraq had made it clear in the past that it wasn't happy about the number of Americans on the team.
"The Iraqis would appear to be concerned about American inspectors. They were interested in making it look like the Americans were being very assertive in the inspection team, but in reality the inspectors are coming from at least 15 different countries."
The inspectors in the past received no UN armed escort, she said, but were provided with Iraqi "minders". Ms Bosch said: "We had no military force with us, the teams would travel together accompanied by Iraqi minders. It's not just Scott Ritter walking around on his own."
Protective clothing would be taken for use at sites suspected of containing hazardous material along with a barrage of sensors. Sites would also be a mixture of military and civilian and inspectors could find themselves in some unlikely places.
"With dual-use equipment one could make chemical or biological weapons at a hospital or an animal feed plant - at a brewery even. One site I visited, al-Hakam, the Iraqis until 1995 said that was an animal feed and bio-pesticide production plant. In 1995 we learned we had been at a site where biological weapons had been produced. In 1996 I was on a mission to destroy that site."
She said that the destruction operation took six weeks and the time needed for each site was hard to anticipate. "It can be a day, a week or several weeks. There can be value in going back to a site."
She expects the latest inspectors to spend a few months in Iraq depending on the exact length of time allowed under existing UN resolutions.
Sites were chosen partly based on knowledge gained from previous inspections and on commercially-available satellite images that the International Atomic Energy Authority had obtained for the purpose. "They'd look at what appear to be newly constructed sites." She said that construction work had been spotted by satellite imagery at one previously inspected site, for example.
All the details of these actions would all be pre-arranged and agreed including the installation of new detection equipment and ongoing surveillance on the ground - there would be few surprises for the Iraqis. She said: "Processes of monitoring and surveillance were all laid out in previous inspections, including U-2 overflights."
With an agreed modus operandi under which the inspectors will stay only a few months and respect the country's sovereign status, and the Iraqis agree to constant surveillance, Ms Bosch seems to expect the latest visit to be very much business as usual particularly if there is no new UN resolution.
