Nuclear equipment 'vanished'
2004-10-12 20:57
Vienna - Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons - in some cases entire buildings housing sophisticated technology - are disappearing from Iraq, the UN nuclear watchdog has reported to the UN.
In a letter to the UN security council, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei said he was concerned about the "widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear programme" under deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.
So-called dual-use equipment - with peaceful as well as weapons-making applications - is disappearing, ElBaradei said, raising fears terrorists could be getting their hands on it.
The October 1 letter to the United Nations was posted on the IAEA web site on Tuesday.
The IAEA, whose inspectors left Iraq before the US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein began in March 2003 and have not been allowed to return, now must rely for its reporting on "open sources and commercial satellite imagery," ElBaradei said.
He said "the imagery shows in many instances the dismantlement of entire buildings that housed high precision equipment (such as flow forming, milling and turning machines; electron beam welders; co-ordinate measurement machines) formerly monitored and tagged with IAEA seals."
Meanwhile, material such as high-strength aluminium has also vanished from open storage areas, he said.
While some military equipment in Iraq later turned up in scrap yards abroad, "none of the high-quality dual-use equipment or materials ... (have) been found", ElBaradei said.
"The disappearance of such equipment and materials may be of proliferation significance," ElBaradei said.
WMD
US President George W Bush justified the war by saying Saddam's push for weapons of mass destruction was one reason for launching the war.
But a new report last week from chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer concluded that Saddam had stopped trying to build weapons of mass destruction after international inspections were begun following the 1991 Gulf war.
ElBaradei reports every six months to the security council since the IAEA still has a UN mandate to investigate Iran's nuclear program.
IAEA spokesperson Mark Gwozdecky said that neither US authorities in Iraq nor Iraq government officials have reported to the agency about nuclear facilities in the country.
ElBaradei said in his letter that the IAEA needed "to be provided by all states with information" relevant to the agency's mandate.
But Gwozdecky said: "We're not getting information from authorities on what's happening."
He said that when the IAEA had inspectors in Iraq, it "had all of this stuff under close scrutiny and Iraq did regularly report to us whenever there were changes in inventory."
"Iraq still has an obligation to report to us whenever there is a change in inventories, but this has not been happening," Gwozdecky said.
- AFP