VIENNA, Sept 16: Iraqi scientists working under the new provisional government confirmed on Tuesday United Nations claims made before the invasion that Iraq has not had any nuclear weapons programme for over a decade.
“There was no way to revive those attempts. There was nothing left,” Dr. Albas Balassem, of Iraq’s new ministry of science and technology told reporters after meeting with officials from the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
US officials had claimed before invading Iraq last March that Iraq had been looking for ways to revive its nuclear programme cut short by the first Gulf war in 1991, including a disputed claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.
But IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told an IAEA general conference meeting in Vienna on Monday that in Dec 1998, based on “more than seven years” of inspections, “there was no indication of Iraq having achieved its goal of producing a nuclear weapon, nor were there any indications that there remained in Iraq any physical capability for the production of amounts of weapon usable material of any practical significance”.
An IAEA official said of Mr Balassem’s comments: “I think if an Iraqi official working under the US-led (occupation) coalition says that nothing happened, it’s consistent with our findings” that Saddam had no nuclear programme after the first Gulf war ended in 1991 and UN inspections of his weapons programmes began.
Mr Balassem said he could not comment on whether Saddam Hussein had been trying to develop either chemical or biological weapons since 1991.
But he confirmed IAEA statements that looting at the Tuwaitha storage facility near Baghdad after the end of this year’s war against Iraq had not led to material for so-called dirty bombs being made available to terrorists.
He said there was only low-radiation raw uranium left, which IAEA officials said was in fact so-called “yellow cake” stored in metal canisters that people looted to use as water holders.
“We didn’t have many areas of radioactive materials, so I don’t think there was a big source of risk,” for terrorists getting their hands on sources that can be used for dirty bombs, Balassem said.
Dirty bombs are made by wrapping radioactive material around conventional bombs, which then explode, scattering radiation over a wide area.
Mr ElBaradei said IAEA inspectors had in June in Tawaitha found that “a small quantity of uranium compounds could have been dispersed” during the looting.
He said “neither the quantity nor the type of material involved would be sensitive from a proliferation point of view.”
There are currently no IAEA inspectors in Iraq as US authorities have said they want to search for traces of weapons of mass destruction on their own.
Another Iraqi scientist, Dr. B.A. Marouf said the Americans had not “found anything to date” showing Saddam had an active nuclear programme.
SHRINE SECURITY: Iraq’s interim government moved on Tuesday toward setting up regional security forces to protect holy sites, seeking control over an issue that put US forces at odds with local militias.
The Governing Council’s security committee met here to flesh out a decision taken on Monday by the US-installed body at a special meeting in Najaf, rocked by a massive car bomb on Aug 29.
Haidar Ahmad, head of the council’s information department, said it was “very conscious of the need to protect holy sites” after the bombing that killed Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al Hakim and 130 other people.
The carnage at the Imam Ali shrine sent armies of Iraqi militiamen into the streets for protection, raising the alarm among US occupation forces which had banned private militias and gave them an ultimatum to disarm.—AFP