[A-List] US imperialism: Iraqi nuclear facilities

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

US in row over nuclear project

International Atomic Energy Authority angry and worried at reported
interference by marines with stockpile of radioactive material

Ian Traynor
Friday April 11, 2003
The Guardian

UN nuclear weapons inspectors are worried that US troops who have seized the
nerve centre of Saddam Hussein's secret nuclear bomb project may be
tampering with highly radioactive material under UN seal.

Combat engineers and specialists from the marines corps took control of the
sprawling Tuwaitha nuclear complex south of Baghdad several days ago and a
parallel team of American nuclear inspectors is thought to have reached the
site yesterday.

An embedded US correspondent with the marines at the site reported that US
officers had broken through steel doors sealed by the International Atomic
Energy Agency and found hundreds of sealed steel drums containing
low-enriched uranium, highly radioactive isotopes, and yellowcake raw
uranium.

Their action appeared to be a calculated slap in the face to the IAEA, the
UN nuclear watchdog, based in Vienna.

Its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, is demanding that his nuclear
inspectors be allowed back into Iraq to verify the large cache of nuclear
material and to check any discrepancies that might arise from the containers
being opened.

A former US ambassador specialising in the nuclear industry said: "The UN
agencies are responsible for supervising the weapons of mass destruction
disarmament of Iraq. If the US government is actually breaking IAEA seals,
it is making a strong statement."

Nuclear experts familiar with the UN inspection effort, which was suspended
before the war, expressed outrage at the US behaviour and a suggestion that
the Americans had uncovered suspect materials in a matter of days that the
IAEA had missed during four months of recent inspections and seven years of
monitoring in the 1990s.

In the four months before the war IAEA experts made 14 inspections of
al-Tuwaitha, a highly contaminated site 18 miles south of Baghdad where two
nuclear reactors have been bombed, first in 1981 and then in 1991.

According to one source close to the IAEA, the Americans assured Dr
ElBaradei yesterday that the seals on containers holding the nuclear
material had not been breached.

But the report in a Pittsburgh newspaper quoted a marines officer as saying
that he had broken through a steel door to find the drums.

"I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the
charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many,
many drums, of highly radioactive material," the officer was quoted as
saying.

The source familiar with the UN investigation said the door was also under
UN seal.

"In the area of the radioisotopes the radiation is very high. Too long
exposure would kill you," he said.

The former US ambassador said the problem was less about safety than about a
seeming US move to humiliate the UN inspectors.

"There was nothing that required the breaking of the seals if the facility
was secured. But has there been a decision taken to violate the IAEA seals?"

The IAEA has drafted a statement demanding to be allowed back to
al-Tuwaitha, telling the Americans that the material represents a
"proliferation risk".

"The only way to determine what's happening is to go there," said the source
close to the IAEA. "The agency has to get back there."