Chief UN inspector Mr Hans Blix said today that the first UN inspections in Iraq in four years went according to plan and another group of inspections would take place tomorrow.
Speaking to a small group of reporters, Mr Blix, who has been asked by US officials to increase the number of inspectors, said an additional training course in January would give him 300 experts who could be sent to Iraq.
The current plans call for about 100 inspectors to be on the ground in Baghdad and ready to work by Christmas.
Earlier, inspectors said Baghdad authorities had cooperated fully.
"As far as we are concerned, we were able to carry out the activities that we had planned to carry out," Mr Dimitri Perricos, leader of the UNMOVIC inspection team, said after visits to three sites outside Baghdad to search for any banned weapons of mass destruction.
"You witnessed the immediateness of the access and that's a good sign and consistent with the commitment we heard earlier," he told reporters.
Another senior inspector, Mr Jacques Baute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said: "We have not sensed anything which obstructed us. We were welcomed in a polite and professional manner and we were able to do the job. That's good enough for us."
One group of inspectors spent around three hours at a large military compound east of Baghdad before returning to UN headquarters at the old Canal Hotel on the outskirts of the capital at noon.
Journalists in around 50 vehicles had raced behind the convoys of white cars carrying the UN symbol across Baghdad, a city of around five million people.
At one point there was an hour-long traffic jam involving inspectors, media and escorting Iraqi officials. Two press vehicles bumped into each other in their haste.
The start of inspections marks the countdown to a December 8th deadline for Baghdad to declare any nuclear, chemical or biological weapons in an initial report to the United Nations Security Council, with the threat of a US-led attack looming.
As UN arms inspectors left their Baghdad headquarters at 5.30 a.m. (Irish time) to start their first field mission, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said: "The inspections have gotten off to a fairly good start, and the Iraqis have promised to submit the report [declaring all its weapons programs] for December 8th, because we were a little concerned they could not do it but they have promised us they can."
"The Iraqis must fully co-operate, but this must be sustained co-operation to avoid a military conflict.
"I do not believe that war is inevitable if, frankly, Iraq takes advantage of the chances it has today and co-operates fully with the inspectors," Mr Annan told French radio station Europe 1.
AFP