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[email protected]16 May 2003
Iraqis complain of illness near nuclear facilityhttp://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/05/16/sprj.nilaw.iraq.radiation/index.html
TUWAITHA, Iraq (CNN) -- Villagers near Iraq's largest nuclear research facility complain that they are falling ill from what doctors say may be radiation poisoning.
Amar Jorda is a boy who said he has fallen ill after drinking water from a plastic barrel from the site.
"My skin itches. I can't breathe well, and my nose bleeds at least four times a day," Amar said.
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One of Amar's friends drank water stored in a different barrel, and she said her vision has faded. "I can't see," Irkhlas Hassam said.
Dr. Jaafar Nasser, a senior physician at the nearest hospital, said he suspects the girl is suffering from radiation sickness. However, until experts conduct a detailed medical study, there's little chance of pinpointing the precise causes or of predicting consequences.
Nasser said he has seen six people within two days with similar symptoms as Amar's -- breathlessness, rashes, frequent nosebleeds and vomiting.
"This is called acute radiation sickness," Nasser said.
22 May 2003
Barrels Missing From Iraqi Nuclear Site http://www.optonline.net/Article/Feeds/0,4003,channel%3D32%26article%3D8249450,00.html Some 20 percent of the known radioactive materials stored at Iraq's largest nuclear facility are unaccounted for, and U.S. nuclear experts have found radioactive patches on the ground where looters dumped out barrels believed to contain hazardous materials.
However, a senior commander said the great majority of the dangerous waste at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was still secure and was not leaking radiation.
"Eighty percent of the barrels are where they were before," said Col. Tim Madere, a specialist in unconventional weapons for the U.S. Army's V Corps.
It was unclear how many barrels were missing. The barrels had been previously catalogued and sealed by international arms inspectors.
26 May 2003
UN inspectors set for Iraq returnhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2939062.stm United Nations nuclear inspectors are scheduled to arrive back in Iraq this week for the first time since the US-led invasion.
Scientists from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will check reports of widespread looting at Iraq's largest nuclear site.
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IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said the inspectors needed to check what had happened since they were last at Tuwaitha, which is about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Baghdad.
"We don't know the situation there, precisely," he said.
"We've seen almost daily reports of looting at that facility over the last month or more.
"When we get there we will determine how much, if any, has gone missing and what needs to be done to make it secure."
30 May 2003
Mystery, menace linger at Iraq nuclear site http://www.telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030530/NEWS/305300313/1025 MANSIA, Iraq- The word spread through town, trumpeted on loudspeakers attached to American vehicles: Return the containers taken from Iraq's largest nuclear facility, and we'll pay you $3 a barrel. Refuse, and you might be arrested.
Now 70 empty barrels - purchased more than a decade ago by U.N. nuclear inspectors to store the Tuwaitha plant's 2 tons of uranium - are in the hands of the U.S. military. The contents have vanished, however, and other stolen containers sit in a nearby schoolyard, a silent and unrecognized danger.
This is the jumbled scene that awaits the International Atomic Energy Agency, now headed back to Iraq under strictly set U.S. conditions, as it attempts to find out what happened on the Americans' watch. The team plans to arrive June 6.
The United States tried to keep the IAEA out of the country, but reluctantly agreed to its return under pressure from the arms control community, which was concerned about the plant's safety and American capability to secure the area and account for its contents.
According to U.S. and U.N. officials, the IAEA team will only be allowed to inspect Tuwaitha, 30 miles southeast of Baghdad, and not any of the other looted nuclear sites the agency had been safeguarding for more than a decade.
The United States told the IAEA that the team must be relatively small, with fewer than 10 members, and all must be safety experts rather than actual weapons inspectors. The group can remain in the country for up to two weeks but must stay on the grounds of Tuwaitha and not in Baghdad, where they had been based before the war.
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IAEA officials were unhappy about the terms but said they would take what they could get.
"The mission will try to determine what nuclear material might have gone missing as a result of the looting and reports of destruction that we have seen over the last six weeks," said Mark Gwozdecky, IAEA spokesman.
He said the team would try to "collect as much of the scattered material as possible, repackage it, reseal it and secure the facility."
31 May 2003
Iraqi Village Fears Nuclear Contamination http://www.gainesvillesun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030531/API/305310540 Ibtisam Hadi was sure the yellow substance she found in her backyard was dangerous, so she asked her neighbors to cover it with cement and fence off the yard.
She hadn't seen anyone dump the material, but dozens of people living in her village had just looted barrels filled with radioactive substances from a nearby storage complex at Iraq's largest nuclear facility and some said they were getting sick.
Six weeks later, American and Iraqi nuclear experts wearing white protective suits, masks and gloves descended on the village of Wardiya, scanning every home, including Hadi's, for traces of radiation. They seemed unconcerned about the cement pile, but they promised to come back.
So far, they haven't. Now the Iraqi Health Ministry is investigating exactly what's going on, and an International Atomic Energy Agency team is planning a two-week visit starting June 6 to investigate Tuwaitha.
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"The Americans are responsible. They know this site contains nuclear material, and they should have protected it," said Dr. Mohammed al-Hamadani, a researcher at the Iraqi Nuclear Authority.
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Villagers quickly began complaining of health problems.
Mohannad Karam, 26, who has lived his entire life in the village of Mansia, near the Tuwaitha plant, was suffering earlier this month from exhaustion and a skin irritation he developed after grabbing several barrels that had been under international observation and logged by the United Nations.
"I removed tags and threw them away. There were hundreds of barrels inside," he said.
5 June 2003
U.S. Troops to Accompany UN Nuclear Team in Iraqhttp://news.lycos.com/news/story.asp?section=Politics&storyId=740215 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces will accompany inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency while they visit a key Iraqi nuclear site, and their limited mission sets no precedent for any future role there for the agency, Defense Department officials said on Thursday.
Officials at the Pentagon and a senior U.S. military official in Iraq, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said restrictions were being put on the seven inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency who are heading to the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad.
The inspectors arrived in Kuwait on Wednesday en route for Baghdad to conduct a limited probe into reports of looting at Iraq's main nuclear facility. The team is due to arrive in Baghdad on Friday and begin work at the site on Saturday.
One official said the IAEA mission is not considered an inspection carried out under prewar U.N. Security Council resolutions on disarmament "and does not set any precedent for future IAEA involvement in Iraq in any disarmament" efforts.
The official said the U.S. could handle Iraq's disarmament and that the IAEA had other important tasks to tackle "... not least of which include countries like North Korea and Iran."
He said the U.N. mission would be "under the protection and auspices of coalition forces" which would accompany the team at all times due to concerns about security in Iraq.
The team is barred from entering the main Tuwaitha complex and will have no access to several other nuclear sites in Iraq that allegedly were looted in the post-war chaos.
The team's task will be to ascertain how much nuclear material was looted from a Tuwaitha storage site before U.S. troops secured parts of the sprawling facility in April during the U.S.-led war to topple President Saddam Hussein.
But the United States, as an occupying power, has limited the IAEA to counting missing containers of radioactive material and repackaging spilled material, ruling out other roles.
More than 500 tons of natural uranium and 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium were stored at Tuwaitha, plus smaller amounts of highly radioactive cesium, cobalt and strontium.
The United States agreed to permit the agency back into Iraq only after repeated warnings by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who feared a radiological and humanitarian emergency after local residents allegedly emptied containers of uranium on the ground and took barrels from the site to use at home.
7 June 2003
Barrels Looted at Nuclear Site Raise Fears for Iraqi Villagershttp://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nyt/20030607/ts_nyt/barrelslootedatnuclearsiteraisefearsforiraqivillagersTUWAITHA, Iraq, June 7 For Iptisam Nuri, a mother of five who was sick with typhoid, the arrival in April of barrels in her home at first seemed a godsend.
When the electricity went out during the war, the water-pumping station that serves this area 30 miles southeast of Baghdad shut down, and people were thirsty. That is when men from a village near here broke through the fence guarding "Location C" at Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s nuclear complex.
"We had to find something to bring water," said Idris Saddoun, 23.
They broke into the warehouse, emptied hundreds of radioactive barrels of their yellow and brown mud, took them to the wells and canals and filled them with water for cooking, bathing and drinking.
For nearly three weeks, hundreds of villagers who live in the shadow of the high earthen berm and barbed wire fences that surrounded the labyrinth of the Iraqi nuclear program here bathed in and ingested water laced with radioactive contaminants from the barrels.
The barrels had held uranium ores, low-enriched uranium "yellowcake," nuclear sludge and other dirty by-products of Mr. Hussein's nuclear research.
Some fell ill with nausea. Others developed rashes that made them itch.
Some contracted ailments that they now attribute to radioactive contamination. It may take years to determine the health effects from the radiation poisoning that occurred here before American military forces arrived to seal off this nuclear complex.
Questions have been raised by international inspectors about why, despite Washington's assurances that coalition forces had secured this facility, an army of looters roamed here freely for days, ransacking vaults and warehouses that contain ample radioactive poisons that could be used to manufacture an inestimable quantity of so-called "dirty bombs."
Today, the first inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived here to survey the loss of control over Iraq's nuclear program that occurred when coalition forces bypassed this complex during their drive on Baghdad.
Under restrictions imposed by the American and British occupation authority, the inspectors will not be allowed to survey the levels of contamination in villages like this one, where survival instincts drove the residents into a compound where radiological dangers awaited them.
"We have been disturbed about reports of looting and that these barrels that contained natural and low-enriched uranium have been looted," Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the atomic agency in Vienna, told the British Broadcasting Corporation. "We are going to find out what's missing to see if we can repackage and secure the material so that we can account for every gram of it."
Mohammed Elbaradei, the head of the atomic agency, first expressed concern about security at Tuwaitha on April 10, the day after Baghdad fell and widespread looting broke out in the capital.
United States Marines who inspected the facility during their push toward Baghdad reported that looting was rampant at the facility. Army officials who checked the site soon after encountered high radiation levels in the storage buildings and withdrew.
Ever since, agency officials have pressed for access to the site and American officials have resisted, arguing that the mandate of the atomic agency in Iraq had expired and that coalition forces were in charge.
Yet continuing reports of lax security here and the discovery that villagers were bathing from contaminated barrels from uranium storage facilities appear to have prompted American officials to relent and allow narrowly defined access for the international inspectors who examined and sealed this facility more than a decade ago.
A team of agency inspectors arrived in the Iraqi capital on Friday. Instead of billeting in their old headquarters at the Canal Hotel, they were closeted behind American military guards at the al-Rashid Hotel, which is off limits to visitors.
When the inspectors arrived here today, they were escorted by a small column of American troops in Humvee transports.
They apparently went straight to "Location C," the warehouse compound on the southern boundary of the nuclear complex where uranium ores, yellowcake and low-level waste were stored.
American troops at the complex would not allow reporters to accompany the inspectors or follow them to the warehouses.
Local villagers said that what they were sure to find was piles of uranium dumped from barrels on the floor of the warehouse, where looters tracked the radioactive material back to their homes, adding to the contamination that came from using the barrels as water containers.
Today, a 14-year-old villager named Haider Raheen led a visitor to a marsh adjoining the village where two of the uranium barrels lay discarded in the reeds. Close by was a white storage box that may have contained some of the more dangerous radio-isotopes that were believed to have been stored in the warehouse.
They are thought to have included cobalt, cesium and strontium, all potentially lethal if ingested.
More than 500 tons of natural uranium and 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium were stored at Tuwaitha, international inspectors have said.
"We were trapped by these barrels," said Ms. Nuri, 34. "After we bathed from them, drank from them and cooked in them, we didn't know what to do."
American soldiers came about 20 days later and offered villagers $3 each for the barrels and recovered more than 100 of them, officials said, but a complete inventory of what is missing as well as the health and security ramifications of loose radioactive material will await the full assessment of the inspectors, who started their work today.
An Army radiological team swept through these villages last month, carrying radiation monitors into brick houses, including Ms. Nuri's. She said she heard a lot of beeping when the monitors were placed near the floor.
But no one checked her five children, and she is now wondering why so many journalists keep coming to this village, named Al-Mansiya, which means,"The Forgotten," but not doctors or aid workers to help the residents, whose food rations are almost exhausted.
It makes her think about Mr. Hussein.
"We are like a string of beads that has been cut, and all the beads are on the floor," she said. "We love the Americans, but we loved Saddam because he was our father. He was the tent over us he was the string in our beads."
8 June 2003
U.N. Nuclear Experts Visit Iraqi Planthttp://www.natchezdemocrat.com/articles/2003/06/07/ap/Headlines/apnews98890-03.txt TUWAITHA, Iraq - Representatives of the U.N. nuclear agency got a firsthand look Saturday at the postwar damage to Iraq's main nuclear facility, peering through broken windows and roaming the grounds to assess the extent of looting and disarray.
The visit to the Tuwaitha nuclear plant was conducted under close watch by American officials, as is the entire mission by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which aims to determine how much damage was done to the plant during the war and what went missing. ...
U.S. troops didn't secure the area until April 7. In the meantime, looters from the surrounding villages stripped it of uranium storage barrels they later used to hold drinking water. Villagers said the looting continued when the Marines handed over control to another unit in mid-April. ...
Freeland's team is accompanying the small group of seven IAEA members wherever it goes, and the military has placed the U.N. experts in a Baghdad hotel it is running. It wasn't clear Saturday if the U.N. experts -- who arrived in the Iraqi capital the day before -- would even be allowed to leave the hotel after work hours without troop escort, military sources and IAEA members said privately.
The Pentagon has said the military presence is meant to provide security and support, but the IAEA group wasn't allowed to use neutral U.N. vehicles for transportation. Instead, they were taken to Tuwaitha in a bus driven by a U.S. soldier traveling in a 10-car military convoy. ...
24 June 2003
Greenpeace Says "Frightening" Radioactivity in Iraqi Villageshttp://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0624-09.htm TUWAITHA, Iraq - Environmental group Greenpeace called on the US-led coalition governing Iraq to clean up villages surrounding a nuclear site outside Baghdad that have been contaminated by "frightening levels" of radioactive material.
Carrying Arabic and English banners that read "Al-Tuwaitha - nuclear disaster. Act now!", Greenpeace activists returned a large uranium "yellowcake" mixing canister to US troops stationed inside the nuclear plant, 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of the capital.
The canister -- the size of a small car -- contained significant quantities of radioactive yellowcake and had been left open and unattended for more than 20 days on a busy section of open ground near the Tuwaitha plant, Greenpeace said Tuesday.
"No one cares about us. We are dying slowly. Our whole neighborhood is contaminated. Although Greenpeace came, it is too late," said Tareq al-Obeidi, a 41-year-old Tuwaitha city council member.
"We need medicine and good hospitals. Removing it from the garbage is just the beginning of our long suffering," he said.
Greenpeace said there were three kilograms (6.6 pounds) worth of yellowcake -- slightly enriched uranium -- inside the mixer looted following the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"It is a disgrace that occupying forces can say they are taking care of human health here in Iraq and they can still allow this to lie open on the ground where children can play in it," said Greenpeace spokeswoman Sara Holden.
Greenpeace said in a statement released in Baghdad that "if this had happened in the UK, the US or any other country, the villages around Tuwaitha would be swarming with radiation experts and decontamination teams.
"It would have been branded a nuclear disaster site and the people given immediate medical check-ups." ...
"The Greenpeace team has only been surveying for eight days and has discovered frightening levels of radioactive contamination," said Townsley.
"The IAEA must be allowed to return with a full mandate to monitor and decontaminate. They may believe they have accounted for most of the uranium, but what about the rest of the radioactive material?"
6 October 2003
What happened to looted Iraqi nuclear material?By Brett Wagner
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/11886764 The release Thursday of chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay's report detailing America's six-month search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has reinflamed the debate over whether anyone will ever uncover that country's alleged stockpiles of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
A great irony, however, seems to have gotten lost in that debate: As a direct result of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq without sufficient forces to secure and protect its nuclear research and storage facilities from rampant looting, enough radioactive material to build scores of dirty bombs now is missing and may be on its way to the international black market.
It didn't have to turn out this way. In the weeks before the invasion, the U.S. military repeatedly warned the White House that its war plans did not include sufficient ground forces, air and naval operations and logistical support to guarantee a successful mission. Those warnings were discounted even mocked by administration officials who professed to know more about war fighting than the war fighters themselves.
Undermanned
But the war fighters were right. Military commanders weren't given enough manpower and logistical support to secure all of the known nuclear sites, let alone all of the suspected ones.
It wasn't until seven of Iraq's main nuclear facilities were extensively looted that the true magnitude of the administration's strategic blunder came into focus.
The White House knew all along, for example, that enormous quantities of dangerous nuclear materials were at the Tuwaitha nuclear storage facility near Baghdad, sealed and accounted for by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency. Soon after the war began, the IAEA warned the White House that it should strive to secure the facility quickly. When word of looting at the site began to leak out through the international media, the IAEA again warned the White House.
The looting, however, went on for more than two weeks before the U.S. took any action. When the site was finally secured and U.S. authorities permitted a brief inspection by IAEA officials, the inspectors were inexplicably forbidden to check the status of highly radioactive materials that could be used in dirty bombs. Many of these materials are now unaccounted for. What the inspectors were allowed to verify is how much uranium is now missing: at least 22 pounds.
Other looted nuclear sites include the Baghdad Nuclear Research Center, where significant quantities of partially enriched uranium, cesium, strontium and cobalt were stored. U.S. survey teams have not been able to determine how many of those materials are missing.
Small amount, huge effect
It takes only a small amount of such materials to arm a dirty bomb. The 22 pounds of missing uranium, for example, could arm a device that could shut down Capitol Hill or the New York Stock Exchange for weeks, if not months.
Properly built and encased with radioactive materials, a dirty bomb can kill thousands and render large areas uninhabitable for months or years. While their destructive capacity pales in comparison to that of actual nuclear bombs, a dirty bomb's capacity to inflict terror should never be underestimated.
Should an organization such as al-Qaeda acquire a dirty bomb, it is unlikely authorities could keep it out of the U.S. or prevent it from being detonated. Under such circumstances, a terrorist group would not even actually need to possess a second device; it would merely just have to say one was planted in a U.S. city. Imagine what the outbound highways would look like or the overall effect on our economy, our security, our civil rights, our way of life.
Several terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, have shown interest in acquiring the radioactive materials necessary to transform an ordinary bundle of explosives into a weapon of mass terror. The blueprints and other components are commonly available. And now, thanks to sloppy war planning by the White House, the only missing component radioactive materials may be readily available, too.
Sort of takes the "pre-emptive" out of pre-emptive war, doesn't it?
Brett Wagner is president of the California Center for Strategic Studies and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
6 August 2004
US blamed for nuclear threathttp://www.iwpr.net/archive/ipm/ipm_130.html(Asharq Al-Awsat) – Thameer Shafeeq, the manager of radiation sources in the office of environment protection from nuclear radiation, said 400 containers of radioactive materials have been looted from Tuwaitha site. The containers might cause a dangerous problem due to their effects on humans, animals and trees of the neighbourhoods surrounding the site. They have succeeded in regaining 70 containers. Many vehicles and much military equipment have been polluted with the depleted uranium all over Baghdad during the war. He blamed US forces for not preventing a nuclear crisis by stopping the looters.
(London-based Asharq al-Awsat, a pro-Saudi independent paper, is issued daily.) top
9 August 2004
Iraq: UN completes annual check of nuclear sites for non-proliferation treaty http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=11591&Cr=iraq&Cr1=9 August 2004 – The United Nations atomic watchdog agency has completed its annual inspection of remaining nuclear materials in Iraq to ensure that they conform to the country's safeguard obligations against the spread of weapons under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), carried out at the request of Iraq's Foreign Minister, is separate from UN Security Council-mandated inspections which probed whether ousted leader Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Those checks ceased in mid-March 2003 shortly before the war.
The material - natural or low-enriched uranium - is not sensitive from a proliferation perspective.
"This week's mission was a good first step," IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said on its completion at the end of last week. "Now we hope to be in a position to complete the mandate entrusted to us by the Security Council."
The removal of remaining sanctions imposed on Iraq in connection with its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent 1991 Persian Gulf War is dependent on completion of this latter mission by teams from the IAEA and the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to ensure that Iraq has eliminated all WMDs. Such teams have not returned since the war.
The latest inspection was not the IAEA's first related to the NPT since the war. In June 2003 a team went to Baghdad to determine how much nuclear material was missing after the reported looting of the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre, which had been under IAEA seal. It found that uranium compounds dispersed in the looting posed no danger from the point of view of proliferation. top
UN: Iraqi Nuclear-Related Materials Have VanishedBy Irwin Arieff
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041011/wl_nm/iraq_un_nuclear_dc&cid=574&ncid=1480 UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons are disappearing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington appears to have noticed, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported on Monday.
Satellite imagery shows that entire buildings in Iraq have been dismantled. They once housed high-precision equipment that could help a government or terror group make nuclear bombs, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report to the U.N. Security Council.
Equipment and materials helpful in making bombs also have been removed from open storage areas in Iraq and disappeared without a trace, according to the satellite pictures, IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said.
While some military goods that disappeared from Iraq after the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, including missile engines, later turned up in scrap yards in the Middle East and Europe, none of the equipment or material known to the IAEA as potentially useful in making nuclear bombs has turned up yet, ElBaradei said.
The equipment -- including high-precision milling and turning machines and electron-beam welders -- and materials -- such as high-strength aluminum -- were tagged by the IAEA years ago, as part of the watchdog agency's shutdown of Iraq's nuclear program. U.N. inspectors then monitored the sites until their evacuation from Iraq just before the war.
The United States barred the inspectors' return after the war, preventing the IAEA from keeping tabs on the equipment and materials up to the present day.
Under anti-proliferation agreements, the U.S. occupation authorities who administered Iraq until June, and then the Iraqi interim government that took power at the end of June, would have to inform the IAEA if they moved or exported any of that material or equipment.
But no such reports have been received since the invasion, officials of the watchdog agency said.
The United States also has not publicly commented on earlier U.N. inspectors' reports disclosing the dismantling of a range of key weapons-making sites, raising the question of whether it was unable to monitor the sites.
'WE SIMPLY DON'T KNOW'
In the absence of any U.S. or Iraqi accounting, council diplomats said the satellite images could mean the gear had been moved to new sites inside Iraq or stolen. If stolen, it could end up in the hands of a government or terrorist group seeking nuclear weapons.
"We simply don't know, although we are trying to get the information," said one council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials had no immediate comment on the report.
President Bush, locked in a tough reelection battle with Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, justified the war, in part, by saying that then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was on the brink of developing a nuclear bomb that he might use against the United States or give to terrorists.
Both men agreed during a Sept. 30 debate that nuclear proliferation is the most serious threat facing the United States.
A new CIA report last week by chief U.S. weapons investigator Charles Duelfer made clear, however, that Saddam had all but given up on his nuclear program after the first Gulf War in 1991.
ElBaradei, whose agency dismantled Iraq's nuclear arms program over a decade ago, drew similar conclusions to the Duelfer report well before the March 2003 invasion.
UN Fears Bombmakers May Get Iraq Nuke Items-DiplomatsTue Oct 12, 2004 09:09 AM ET
By Louis Charbonneau
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6478569VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog is worried the U.S.-led war aimed at disarming Iraq may have unleashed a proliferation crisis if looters have sold equipment that can be used to make atomic weapons, Western diplomats said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitored Saddam Hussein's nuclear sites before last year's Iraq war, said on Monday equipment and materials that could be used to make atomic weapons have been disappearing from Iraq but neither Baghdad nor Washington had noticed.
"If some of this stuff were to end up in Iran, some people would be very concerned," a diplomat close to the IAEA told Reuters. "The IAEA's big concern would be profiteering, people who would sell this stuff with no regard for who is buying it."
The profiteers could have sold the items on to groups or countries interested in weapons, the diplomat added.
The United States believes Iraq's neighbor, Iran, is secretly developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program. Tehran denies this, insisting its nuclear ambitions are limited to generating electricity.
Pre-war U.S. allegations that Saddam had revived his atomic weapons program from the early 1990s have never been proven.
But the IAEA has warned countries to keep a close eye on all their nuclear sites due to multiple warnings from Western intelligence agencies that terrorist organizations are interested in getting their hands on a nuclear device.
AUTHORIZED OR UNAUTHORIZED REMOVAL?
Satellite imagery shows entire buildings in Iraq that once housed high-precision equipment have been dismantled, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he believed most of the removal of materials and equipment took place in the chaos that reigned shortly after the invasion last spring.
"It is not clear, but it appears, and I'm seeking more details after receipt of the IAEA report overnight, that most of the unauthorized removal took place in the immediate aftermath of the major conflict in March and April last year," Straw told parliament.
The diplomat close to the IAEA said Straw's comment implied the removal of materials and equipment that took place after April 2003 had been authorized.
"If that is the case, the IAEA would like to know," he said, adding that the U.N. watchdog had received no response so far from the Iraqi, U.S. or British authorities in this matter.
In 1991, the IAEA detected Saddam's clandestine nuclear weapons program and spent the next seven years investigating and dismantling it. By the time U.N. inspectors fled the country in December 1998, Iraq's covert atom bomb program was gone.
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said that before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, all of the nuclear materials, equipment and facilities that have disappeared from satellite photos were accounted for and were not being used in a weapons program.
"This is dual-use stuff of which -- when we were there -- we were certain was not being misused," he said, adding that everything had been tagged or sealed and was closely monitored.
"It was systematically removed," Gwozdecky said.
A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the issue was in the hands of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group -- U.S. weapons inspectors who declared this month that Saddam had no stockpiles of banned weapons when the U.S.-led invasion began.
President Bush, locked in a tough re-election battle with Senator John Kerry, justified the war in part by saying Saddam was on the brink of developing a nuclear bomb that he might use against the United States or give to terrorists. (Additional reporting by Madeleine Chambers in London)
13 October 2003
Iraq nuclear losses 'a scandal'http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3738452.stmThe US admits its forces lost control of security after Saddam fell
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said the loss of control of Iraq's nuclear sites by the US after it occupied the country was scandalous.
His comments were echoed by former senior US weapons inspector David Kay.
They were speaking after the UN nuclear inspectorate said items had disappeared from the sites which could have been used in nuclear programmes.
But Mr Kay said the loss was not in itself dangerous, as such materials were freely available outside Iraq.
Satellite imagery showed that entire buildings had been dismantled, said the International Atomic Energy Agency.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the agency was concerned that sensitive technology might have fallen into the hands of those involved in the black market in nuclear weapons.
She said scrap metal from Iraqi nuclear sites, some of which was mildly radioactive, had been turning up abroad.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has ordered a detailed report into the matter.
For its part, the US has said the IAEA itself had two opportunities since the war to inspect facilities and make sure materials were properly accounted for.
'No excuse'
Mr Blix said large amounts of nuclear material had been removed from Iraq - by IAEA inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War, and by the Americans when they toppled Saddam Hussein's regime and occupied the country last year.
He said Iraq still had "machines and equipment that could be of use in a nuclear programme... But of course it is not the highly-enriched uranium, or plutonium, that you need for a bomb".
However, he added: "I think what is somewhat scandalous is that it's been sitting there under an occupation. It was sitting there controlled when the inspections were there. But when the occupation comes in, it disappears...
"All these things were tagged and they were visited by the inspectors, and in comes the United States with 200,000 people on board and occupies the country in order, ostensibly, to take care of weapons of mass destruction, and they lose control and the instruments and equipment that could be helpful in nuclear production disappears."
Mr Kay said: "Exporters could export almost all of this equipment today legally, for example, to Iran without any control.
"But.. that's not an excuse for what's happened to it. Losing control of it really is inexcusable."
'Sites now secure'
The US has admitted that it shares concerns about how much and what sort of sensitive equipment and material may have disappeared in the chaos and looting which followed the invasion of Iraq.
But state department spokesman Richard Boucher said the IAEA had been allowed access to Iraq's main nuclear site, Tuwaitha, in June last year and August this year.
They had had the opportunity then, he said, to inspect facilities and make sure materials there were properly categorised and accounted for.
Iraqi Technology Minister Rashad Omar said IAEA inspectors had free access and could come back whenever they wanted.
He said that while there had been looting at the start of the US-led invasion, the sites were now secure.
The IAEA responded to Iraq's invitation by saying that any decision on the return of its inspectors would have to come from the UN Security Council.
The US removed nearly two tonnes of low-enriched uranium from Iraq earlier this year. The IAEA has verified that 550 tonnes of nuclear material still remain at Tuwaitha.
Iraq, the agency says, has asked for help to sell the nuclear material and in dismantling and decontaminating former nuclear facilities.
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