Libya 'shopped' in Europe, Asia

2003-12-23 20:13

Vienna - Lacking its own know-how and technology, Libya shipped in scientists and materials from Europe in a bid to create weapons programmes that Muammar Ghaddafi's regime hoped would make Tripoli a nuclear power, diplomats and experts said on Tuesday.

Libya, seeking to reintegrate into the international community after more than two decades in the cold, had stunned the world at the weekend by formally renouncing its past attempts to build weapons of mass destruction.

The sources revealed the extent to which Libya, treated as a pariah by the West since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, depended on European countries to acquire technology that it claimed was merely for peaceful energy purposes - but was also used to try to develop a weapons programme.

"Libya did its shopping in Europe and Asia to try and build nuclear and chemical weapons," said a nuclear arms expert based in Vienna, the home of the United Nations atomic agency the IAEA.

"Having neither the scientists nor the know-how of the parts and equipment needed to build what would have been the first Islamic bomb, it acquired abroad dual technologies for achieving that goal," added the expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ghaddafi started the nuclear programme by building in 1979 an experimental reactor with 10 megawatts capacity with the help of the Soviet Union, a Western diplomat said.

The facility, in Tajura, 15km southeast of Tripoli "is the core of the Libyan nuclear programme", the diplomat said.

The site went live in 1981 and within three years 750 Libyan technicians were working there alongside Soviet scientists. Its job was to produce radioactive isotopes separated by centrifuges and produce research in applied nuclear and chemical physics.

To modernise the Tajura plant, Libya approached in 1984 the Belgian nuclear company Belgonucleaire. But after pressure from the United States, the firm turned down a contract said to be worth $1bn.

Meanwhile, according to one diplomat, Libya's nuclear technicians were studying in the United States and Europe, a process that continued "until the early 1990s."

Libya occupied in 1975 the Aouzou strip in Chad, an area said to rich in uranium deposits. It also signed an agreement with India over peaceful uses of atomic energy in 1978.

In 1976, France agreed to build a nuclear power station that would provide energy for a desalination plant. Libya also signed a $4bn deal for the Soviet Union to build a massive 880 megawatt plant west of Tripoli.

But neither of these projects were realised.

"With this technical cooperation, Libya was trying to acquire peaceful technologies and use them for military purposes," said the second diplomat.

A report published in November by the CIA also indicates that Libya was using its foreign contacts to buy nuclear technology that could be used for both military and civilian purposes.

- SAPA