BAGHDAD: Seven weeks after Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facilities were ransacked while US troops stood aside, UN weapons inspectors are to be allowed back into Iraq to try to establish how much radioactive material has been looted.

Experts from the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, are expected in Kuwait this weekend before they travel to the Tuwaitha complex south of Baghdad, the centre of Saddam’s secret nuclear bomb project. The complex was the scene of looting in April when lax US security encouraged a free for all.

The IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, has been appealing to Washington for weeks for a return of his experts. But the appeals were ignored until a few days ago when Washington said it could send in a handful of inspectors, but restricted them to Tuwaitha.

It may be that pressure from Britain helped prompt the u-turn. Dr ElBaradei sought the help of Jack Straw a fortnight ago and the UK foreign secretary agreed to raise the issue with the US, IAEA sources said.

Up to eight UN experts are expected to spend up to three weeks in Iraq investigating the thefts from Tuwaitha. Before the war the IAEA had almost 100 tons of raw uranium and low enriched uranium — none of it weapons-grade — stored in barrels under UN seal at the complex, as well as small quantities of highly radioactive caesium, cobalt, and strontium.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.