WASHINGTON, Oct 29: New evidence emerged in the United States on Friday that contradicted President Bush's claim that 380 tons of explosives from Iraq were looted before the US troops occupied the country.
Whether the explosives were moved from the facility by the Iraqi regime before the war began, or looted after the facility came under US control, has become an issue in the presidential campaign.
If proven that the explosives disappeared under US occupation, it may seriously hurt Mr. Bush's efforts to get re-elected on Nov 2. An American TV crew travelling with the US Army in Iraq shot video last year that may show some high-grade explosives were present at the Al Qaqaa military compound after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Nine days after the fall of Baghdad, on April 18, 2003, a news crew from Minneapolis-St Paul station KSTP-TV, embedded with troops from the 101st Airborne Division, entered the bunkers at the facility, south of Baghdad.
At one of the bunkers, troops broke a seal to get inside and found barrels filled with powdered explosives, said Dean Staley, then a reporter at the Minnesota station. Also on Friday, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said US officials had been cautioned about the vulnerability of high explosives stored at Iraq's Al Qaqaa military facility before they disappeared.
Melissa Fleming says the UN nuclear watchdog's chief monitors in Iraq had expressed concern to the US over the security of the explosives in Al Qaqaa, after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex in the country was looted in April last year, China Radio International reported Friday.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei also told the UN Security Council in his report in February last year that he was concerned about the explosives, which Iraq's Science and Technology Ministry reported as missing on Oct 10.
The explosives, which were sealed by IAEA inspectors two months before the war in Iraq, could be used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons
On Thursday evening, the Pentagon released a satellite photo showing a tractor-trailer loaded with white containers outside a bunker at Al-Qaqaa on March 17, 2003 - two days before the US invasion.
But later US defence officials conceded that the photo did not prove the explosives were being moved. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported on Friday that the explosives represent only a tiny fraction of the vast quantities of other munitions unaccounted for since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government 18 months ago.
US military commanders estimated last fall that Iraqi military sites contained anywhere between 650,000 tons and one million tons of explosives, artillery shells, aviation bombs and other ammunition. The Bush administration cited official figures this week showing about 400,000 tons destroyed or in the process of being eliminated. That leaves the whereabouts of more than 250,000 tons unknown.
Bush administration officials, however, have refused to accept a statement issued earlier this month by a senior official of Iraq's interim government that the munitions disappeared after the April 9, 2003, fall of Baghdad "due to a lack of security". Iraqi authorities have not offered any supporting evidence, and Bush administration officials have suggested the explosives may have been removed earlier by Iraqi forces.
