A rchive Date
[ 13-12-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2002/12/13/7267-ap.html
IAEA chief: Iraq nuke dossier is old material
By SUSANNA LOOF - Associated Press
Fri, December 13, 2002
VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Most of Iraq's nuclear weapons declaration to the United Nations is old material, and only 300 pages in Arabic are believed to contain any new information, the chief of the U.N. atomic energy agency said Friday.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency in charge of hunting for nuclear arms in Iraq, said 2,100 of the dossier's 2,400 pages "is material we already had before."
His assessment came as U.S. officials accused Iraq of failing to account for a number of missing chemical and biological weapons in its overall 12,000-page arms declaration, which includes the 2,400 pages the IAEA is analyzing.
The report appears to skip over purchases that U.S. intelligence believe are related to Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, officials in Washington said Thursday.
"Iraq has said they have not taken part in any nuclear weapons activities. We are far from reaching a conclusion on that matter," ElBaradei said. "Of course we must verify that statement. The process will take time but you need to bear with us because if successful, this is the best way of ensuring that Iraq disarms - and could spare innocent lives."
Briefing reporters at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, ElBaradei said even the 300 Arabic pages - which cover Iraqi activities from 1991-2002 - contain information familiar to the agency. Its analysis was continuing, he said.
"We expect that by next Tuesday, we will provide the Security Council with a sanitized copy of that report. ... We are sanitizing that report and we are doing detailed analysis," he said. By sanitizing, ElBaradei said, he meant removing sensitive information that might lead to nuclear proliferation.
Despite his agency's push for preliminary findings and a quick analysis of Iraq's declaration, "it will take us something like a year before we can come to any credible conclusion," ElBaradei cautioned.
Iraq has said it has no weapons of mass destruction. Inspectors with the IAEA and the New York-based U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission have been fanning out across the country in search of nuclear, biological or chemical agents and the means to produce them.
"Iraq claims they have not been involved in any proscribed activities in the last four years. We cannot take that statement at face value," ElBaradei said, adding that further inspections were necessary to confirm or refute Baghdad's insistence that it poses no threat.
The U.N. inspections have resumed under a new Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to report on nuclear, biological, chemical and missile research and production. It filed that 12,000-page U.N. declaration last weekend; the IAEA is analyzing the 2,400-page nuclear portion.
The latest U.N. resolution also mandates that Iraq surrender any weapons of mass destruction, which it denies having. The U.S. government says it is sure Baghdad retains such weapons, and threatens war if Iraq fails, in Washington's view, to comply with U.N. disarmament demands.
American intelligence experts were comparing their conclusions with experts from other countries on the Security Council, and a Council meeting was planned for next Thursday.
The Iraqi report largely rehashes old declarations and reports and contains little new information, officials said. It has done nothing to alter the U.S. belief that Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons and is pursuing nuclear weapons, officials said.
More important than what Iraq put in the declaration is what it left out, an official said.
The report, being analyzed at the CIA and elsewhere, does not account for quantities of chemical and biological agents that were missing when U.N. inspectors were expelled from Iraq in 1998, officials said. Hundreds of mustard gas shells, for example, remain unaccounted for, officials said.
It also does not explain a number of Iraqi acquisitions that the United States suspects are related to Saddam's nuclear program, officials said. This includes the purchase of uranium in Africa, as well as purchases in Western countries of high-tech equipment that could be used in a uranium enrichment program, officials said. Enriched uranium or plutonium is a necessary requirement for a nuclear weapon.
In a round of inspections in the 1990s, after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, the United Nations destroyed tons of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons and dismantled Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
ElBaradei said the United States should hand over the "solid evidence" the Bush administration claims it has that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. resolution urges all member states to share relevant information.
"We need the information. Information is the key to success," he said.
ElBaradei said inspectors were talking to Iraqi scientists and would consider doing so outside the country "if they feel more comfortable being interviewed outside of Iraq."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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