In the latest chapter of this comic opera, our fearless UN inspectors in Iraq now admit they’ve been giving advance warning to the Iraqis that they’re on the way, magnifying glasses in hand.

BAGHDAD — Serious doubts surfaced over the surprise nature of new arms inspections in Iraq when a United Nations spokesman admitted the head of a suspected weapons site had been given advance warning of the visit by the UN experts to his facility on Saturday.

‘He was informed the day before, on Friday, that the team was coming to remove an air sampler and install a new one,’ UN spokesman Hiro Ueki told AFP by phone shortly after denying at a press briefing that the UN had tipped off the Iraqis.

‘That is all there is to it,’ the spokesman added in an apparent bid to quash a possible controversy about whether UN inspections of suspected weapons sites, which resumed on Nov 27 were really on no-notice basis.

Reporters had pressed Mr Ueki earlier about remarks by Iraqi official Hussein Hammudeh who told journalists he had prior notice of a visit to his facility by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts.