UN nuclear inspectors back in Iraq

[k hanly <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Can you just imagine the reaction if Hussein had put such restrictions on UN
inspectors. These inspectors are expressly forbidden to look for WMD! I have
not seen a single article that criticises the US for its refusal to let the
UN inspectors continue on from where they left off. The most that one sees
is a suggestion that it might be better at some time to have them involved
because of  the credibility issue. It is not suggested that there is
something terribly wrong about the US barring the inspectors in the first
place.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2890078
Cheers Ken Hanly

U.N. Nuclear Experts in Iraq to Check on Looting
Fri June 6, 2003 11:07 AM ET




By Alistair Lyon
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - United Nations nuclear experts returned to Iraq Friday
for the first time since the U.S.-led invasion to check on looting at a
research facility.

Brian Rens, leader of the seven-member International Atomic Energy Agency
team that flew in from Kuwait, said their mission was to verify nuclear
material at the Tuwaitha site -- not to look for any weapons of mass
destruction.

"That is not our objective. It is to establish what materials have been
removed from the site and what remains and to secure that material and to
place it under seal, an agency seal," he told reporters at the Rasheed hotel
in Baghdad.

Rens said the team would visit the site at the sprawling Tuwaitha compound,
Iraq's main nuclear facility, Saturday or Sunday.

U.S. forces say they have recovered about 100 barrels and five radiological
devices possibly looted from the site.

Some locals who unwittingly washed clothes or stored food in the barrels say
children are falling ill.

Rens said he doubted there was a serious radiological problem at the site, a
three-building storage facility 12 miles southeast of Baghdad.

"The type of materials that are there are more of a contamination risk than
a radiation risk," he said. "Obviously this material is not to be ingested
or inhaled. It is toxic by nature, so there is a health risk."

U.S. Army Col. Mickey Freeland, heading a military liaison team that will
escort the IAEA mission, said the U.S.-led civil administration had launched
a separate effort to check for environmental and health damage in the area.

The IAEA team, operating under tight U.S. restrictions, is barred from the
rest of the Tuwaitha complex and will have no access to six other nuclear
sites that may have been looted.

More than 500 tons of natural uranium and 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium
were stored at Tuwaitha, plus smaller amounts of highly radioactive cesium,
cobalt and strontium.

WEAPONS MYSTERY

The United States wants to draw a clear line between the team's mission and
prewar inspections carried out under U.N. Security Council resolutions on
disarmament.

Council members, including Britain, have urged Washington to allow the
return of U.N. nuclear and other arms inspectors withdrawn just before the
war, but have made no headway.

Instead, a team of experts from the United States and its allies is
expanding the hunt for ousted president Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of
mass destruction.

No such weapons have been discovered since the United States and Britain
invaded Iraq on March 20 to topple him.

The failure to find the arms, cited by the two powers as the main
justification for the war, has fueled controversy over whether they misled
the world over the threat posed by Iraq, or acted on faulty, or slanted,
intelligence.

Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix said Friday banned arms might eventually be
found. If not, the question arose as to why the Iraqis had failed to prove
their innocence by cooperating fully with the inspectors, which might have
averted war.

He told BBC radio possible explanations included the pride of the Iraqis and
the megalomania of their leader. "I think that Saddam probably figured
himself as emperor of Mesopotamia and they regarded all inspections as
intrusions," Blix said.

The United States agreed to the IAEA mission only after repeated warnings by
its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, who feared a radiological and humanitarian
emergency after the looting.

The U.S. military official said U.S. forces had found the storage site "in
disarray" with uranium dumped on the floor. U.S. officials last month paid
local people $3 for any barrel or other stolen item.

Much of the material at Tuwaitha had been gathering dust under U.N. seal for
more than a decade before the looting.