Baghdad, Iraq ? U.N. arms experts said they interviewed a scientist possibly linked to a clandestine Iraqi nuclear program Friday. Baghdad officials said the inspectors also scoured sites for signs of suspected weapons of mass destruction.

Officials from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, quizzed Kazem Mojbal, a metallurgist from the state-run Al-Raya company.

Inspections team spokesman Hiro Ueki said Mojbal gave U.N. officials details about an unidentified Iraqi program that “has attracted considerable attention as a possible prelude to a clandestine nuclear program.”

“The answers will be of great use in completing the IAEA assessment,” Ueki said in a statement.

A senior source for Iraq’s National Monitoring Directorate, the Iraqi body that deals with inspectors, said U.N. officials interviewed Mojbal for an hour. An Iraqi official was present during the interview.

“For sure, I have no relationship with the nuclear program,” Mojbal said on television later Friday.

“I became upset during the meeting because they emphasized (providing) names of people,” he said.

Inspectors visited the al-Nasr al-Atheem State Co. in Baghdad, a plant for chemical-processing equipment that used to be known as the State Heavy Engineering Co., the Iraqi Information Ministry said.

Ayad Mohammed Hussein, assistant director of the company, said al-Nasr served the oil and electricity industries.

“We do not have hidden weapons of mass destruction,” he said.