VIENNA, Jan 6: The UN nuclear watchdog is investigating Egypt for small, undeclared nuclear experiments that could be related to atomic weapons development, diplomats said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit swiftly denied that his country had done anything counter to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The experiments involved making uranium metal, which could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium, and carrying out the first steps of uranium enrichment by making uranium tetrafluoride (UF4), one diplomat said.

But another diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said no uranium was actually enriched, referring to the process that makes nuclear fuel but what can also be the explosive core of atomic bombs.

The experiments were "small stuff, nothing and goes back in history all the way to the 1950s," he said. "These are small sporadic experiments which have been done over the years.

This is not Iran, this is not South Korea," he added, referring to Iran which the IAEA is investigating on US charges that it is secretly developing nuclear weapons and South Korea, which has admitted to carrying out rogue nuclear experiments.

Most of the work was apparently done before 1982, when Egypt signed a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, opening itself from that point on to inspections, the diplomat said. -AFP