UN arms hunter says U.S. claims are off-base

[Sticky]

VIENNA (AP) - A top United Nations weapons hunter says it would have been "virtually impossible" for Iraq to revive a nuclear bomb program with equipment recently dug up from a Baghdad backyard, as the United States contends.

Jacques Baute said the long-term monitoring of Iraq's nuclear establishment planned by the UN Security Council would have stifled any attempt to build a huge uranium-enrichment plant for making bomb material.

"This is a mistake people are making," Baute said. Such contentions ignore the fact that Iraq would have operated for years under international controls had the UN plan not been aborted by war, he said.

Baute also said in an interview with The Associated Press that it appears the unearthed cache of uranium enrichment parts, surrendered by an Iraqi scientist last month, lacked critical components, and its accompanying blueprints were marred by errors.

Baute, a French nuclear physicist, led the International Atomic Energy Agency inspection teams that - until the U.S.-British invasion in March - crisscrossed Iraq in search of banned weapons.

His assessment of the hidden equipment came as a furor grew in Washington over President George W. Bush's use of an earlier allegation - that Baghdad sought uranium from Niger - to bolster the White House case for war.

It was Baute's investigation last February that unmasked as forgeries the documents that underpinned the claims about Niger

More:

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/Iraq/2003/07/14/135791-ap.html

[Paschall]

1. Oh, the scenario's getting interesting, Francophiles

It was a Frenchman's "investigation last February that unmasked as forgeries the documents that underpinned the claims about Niger."

Mr. Blair, need you say more?