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Nuclear inspectors off to Iraq
27/05/2003 14:31 - (SA)
Vienna - The United Nation's nuclear watchdog agency is to send an inspection team back to Iraq this week to investigate a site where nuclear material disappeared after looting, said a spokesman on Tuesday.
Mark Gwozdecky of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said: "We'll send, probably on Friday or Saturday, a mission of seven international experts to Iraq."
He said the inspectors would visit the Al-Tuwaitha nuclear research centre, south of Baghdad, to "check how much low enriched uranium and 'yellowcake' (natural uranium) is still stocked (there) or missing".
The mission is being carried out in co-operation with US authorities and should last "a maximum of two weeks".
He said "many tens of tons of natural uranium and at least two tons of low, enriched uranium" have disappeared from Al-Tuwaitha.
The research centre, one of Iraq's main nuclear complexes, had been under seals since the 1991 Gulf War, but was hard hit by a wave of looting that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has warned of a potential humanitarian disaster if nuclear material falls into the wrong hands.
- AFX
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