CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: And now to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. U.N. experts are on the hunt again today. They are inspecting seven sites, including a water treatment facility and a communications center. Rym Brahimi has details now on recent searches and a look ahead to some important deadlines.</s>RYM BRAHIMI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the pace of the inspections seems to have slowed down slightly in this holiday season, with only three inspections carried out here on the ground on Sunday. Meanwhile, there is still a lot for the U.N. weapons inspectors to do these days, the list of more than 500 Iraqi scientists, for instance. That's something that they're going to have to look at carefully. It's currently being examined in New York and Vienna. But they're going to be looking at it here, as well, to continue that process of interviewing Iraqi scientists that began only last week. Now, the other deadlines that the U.N. weapons inspectors have coming up are January the 9th, when the U.N. weapons inspectors have to give their assessment of the U.N. weapons declaration, of Iraq's weapons declaration that it handed over to the U.N. on December the 7th. And then the big deadline that everybody's going to be looking for is January 27th, and that's when the U.N. weapons inspectors have to report on their findings in the past 60 days of their inspections by then. And that's going to be something that everybody's looking for, including U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, for instance. Meanwhile here in Iraq, where a lot of people here are bracing for that moment, waiting to see what's going to happen. Very little people here have hope that a war can be avoided at this stage. That said, a lot of activities here, a meeting of President Saddam Hussein with his cabinet to discuss Arab regional and international affairs. Rym Brahimi, CNN, Baghdad.
U.N. Experts On Hunt Again Today