A rchive Date
[ 25-10-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/10/25/684627-ap.html
Explosives missing in Iraq
By WILLIAM J. KOLE
October 25, 2004
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Several hundred tonnes of conventional explosives were looted from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the UN nuclear agency told the Security Council on Monday.
A "lack of security" resulted in the loss of 342 tonnes of high explosives from the sprawling Al-Qaqaa military installation about 50 kilometres south of Baghdad, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said.
The IAEA fears "that these explosives could have fallen into the wrong hands," said spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.
The development immediately became an issue on the U.S. presidential campaign trail, with the White House down-playing the threat from the missing cache of weapons but Senator John Kerry's campaign calling the disappearance a "grave and catastrophic mistake."
ElBaradei told the council the IAEA had been trying to give the U.S.-led multinational force and Iraq's interim government "an opportunity to attempt to recover the explosives before this matter was put into the public domain."
But since the disappearance was reported in the media, he said he wanted the Security Council to have the letter dated Oct. 10 that he received from Mohammed Abbas, a senior official at Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology, reporting the theft of the explosives. The materials were lost through "the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security," the letter said.
The letter from Abbas informed the IAEA that since Sept. 4, 2003, looting at the Al-Qaqaa installation south of Baghdad had resulted in the loss of 194.741 tonnes of HMX, 141.233 tonnes of RDX and 5.8 tonnes of PETN explosives.
HMX and RDX can be used to demolish buildings, down jetliners, produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weapons. HMX and RDX are key ingredients in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex, substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just 450 grams to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people.
ElBaradei's cover letter to the council said the HMX had been under IAEA seal and the RDX and PETN were "both subject to regular monitoring of stock levels." "The presence of these amounts was verified by the IAEA in January 2003," he said.
At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said U.S.-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter, the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Iraqis told the nuclear agency the materials were stolen and looted because of a lack of security at governmental installations, Fleming said.
"We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted," she told AP. A European diplomat familiar with the disappearance of the explosives said their presence was widely known.
The Associated Press drove past the compound Monday and saw no visible security at the gates of the site, a jumble of low-slung, yellow storage buildings that appeared deserted. Iraq's interim government warned the United States and UN nuclear inspectors earlier this month that the explosives had vanished.
"Upon receiving the declaration on Oct. 10, we first took measures to authenticate it," Fleming said. "Then on Oct. 15, we informed the multinational forces through the U.S. government with the request for it to take any appropriate action in co-operation with Iraq's interim government.
Bush's national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, was informed after Oct. 15, and then she notified Bush, the White House said.
During an Air Force One trip Monday between Texas and Colorado, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the administration's first concern was whether it was a nuclear proliferation threat, and it had determined it was not.
"Remember at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom there was some looting, and some of it was organized," McClellan said. "There were munitions caches spread throughout the country, and so these are all issues that are being looked into by the multinational forces and the Iraqi Survey Group." The probe will include finding out what happened to the weapons and whether they are being used against U.S. forces, he said.
In Washington, a spokesman for Kerry's campaign said the Bush administration "must answer for what may be the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq." "How did they fail to secure ... tons of known, deadly explosives despite clear warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency to do so?" senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart said in a statement.
"They were urgently and specifically informed that terrorists could be helping themselves to the most dangerous explosives bonanza in history, but nothing was done to prevent it from happening."
Before the war, inspectors with the Vienna-based IAEA had kept tabs on the so-called "dual use" explosives because they could have been used to detonate a nuclear weapon. Experts say HMX can be used to create a highly powerful explosion with enough intensity to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.
IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the 2003 invasion and have not yet been able to return despite ElBaradei's repeated urging that the experts be allowed back in to finish their work.
Timeline on missing explosives in Iraq
-1991: The International Atomic Energy Agency placed a seal over storage bunkers holding conventional explosives known as HMX and RDX at the Al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad as part of UN sanctions that ordered the dismantlement of Iraq's nuclear program after the Gulf War. HMX is a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.
-January 2003: IAEA inspectors viewed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa for the last time. The inspectors took an inventory and again placed storage bunkers at Al-Qaqaa under agency seal.
-February 2003: IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the United Nations that Iraq had declared that "HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives." This apparently did not include the HMX that remained under seal at Al-Qaqaa.
-March 2003: Nuclear agency inspectors visited Al-Qaqaa for the last time but did not examine the explosives because the seals were not broken. The inspectors then pulled out of the country.
-March 2003: The U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq.
-After the invasion: The Pentagon said Monday that "coalition forces were present in the vicinity at various times during and after major combat operations. The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility, but found no indicators of WMD (weapons of mass destruction). While some explosive material was discovered, none of it carried IAEA seals.
-Oct. 10, 2004: Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the nuclear agency that 342 tonnes of explosives had disappeared from the Al-Qaqaa facility. The Iraqis said the materials were stolen and looted because of a lack of security.
-Oct. 15, 2004: The IAEA informed the U.S. mission in Vienna about the disappearance. U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was informed days later, and she informed President George W. Bush, according to White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
-Oct. 23-24, 2004: The Pentagon ordered the U.S. military command in Baghdad and the Iraq Survey Group to investigate the IAEA report, the Pentagon official said, adding it was not clear how or by whom the explosives were taken or whether any of the material had been used in insurgent attacks.
-Oct. 25, 2004: ElBaradei reports the explosives' disappearance to the UN Security Council after The New York Times reports the cache is missing.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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