http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/12/iraq.main/index.html
U.N. watchdog agency: Nuclear materials gone
Equipment and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons
have disappeared from Iraq, warns the chief of the U.N. atomic
watchdog agency.
Satellite imagery shows entire buildings that once housed
high-precision equipment that could be used to make nuclear bombs have
been dismantled, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a
letter to the U.N. Security Council. (Full story)
A CIA report released last week by chief U.S. weapons inspector
Charles Duelfer concluded that dictator Saddam Hussein terminated his
nuclear program in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War.
The U.S. government prevented U.N. weapons inspectors from returning
to Iraq after the current war -- thereby blocking the IAEA from
monitoring the high-tech equipment and materials.
Anti-proliferation agreements say that the United States and the Iraqi
interim government must inform the IAEA of any import or export of
such materials and equipment.
"The kind of equipment we're talking about ... is the sort of thing
that has a multitude of industrial applications," said IAEA spokesman
Mark Gwozdecky in a phone interview from the agency's headquarters in
Vienna, Austria.
"We were satisfied when we were in Iraq that it was not being used for
a nuclear weapons program. In the wrong hands, it could be turned to
the use in a nuclear weapons program. Until we establish that this
material is in responsible hands, we have to treat it as a serious
proliferation concern."
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