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  • From: "Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>
  • To: "Homestead mailing list" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] not iminding *that* store, either
  • Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:16:18 -0700

http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusintl/ap10-28-085259.asp?reg=mideast&vts=102820041846



U.N. nuclear agency says it warned U.S. about high explosives after April
2003 looting of separate nuclear complex in Iraq



ASSOCIATED PRESS



VIENNA, Austria, Oct. 28 - The U.N. nuclear agency said Thursday it warned
the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Iraq's
Al-Qaqaa military installation after another facility - Iraq's main nuclear
complex - was looted in April 2003.



Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy
Agency, told The Associated Press that <>U.S. officials were cautioned
directly about what was stored at Al-Qaqaa, the main high explosives facility
in Iraq.


Some 377 tons of high explosives are now missing from the facility,
said by Iraqi officials to have been taken amid looting. Questions have
arisen about what the United States knew about Al-Qaqaa and what it did to
secure the site.


Fleming did not say which officials were notified or exactly when, but
she said the IAEA - which had put storage bunkers at the site under seal just
before the war - alerted the United States after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex
was looted.


''After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April
2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspectors alerted American officials that we
were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at
Al-Qaqaa,'' she told the AP.


''It is also important to note that this was the main high explosives
storage facility in Iraq, and it was well-known through IAEA reports to the
Security Council,'' Fleming said.


IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei informed the United Nations in February
2003, and again in April of that year, that he was concerned about HMX
explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa.


The explosives' disappearance has become a flashpoint in the final
week of the U.S. presidential campaign, with Democratic hopeful John Kerry
accusing the Bush administration of ignoring the threat and the White House.
The Pentagon has suggested that Saddam Hussein's regime may have removed the
explosives before the war began.


IAEA inspectors reportedly last confirmed that the agency's seals on
the explosives were in place and intact on March 15, five days before the
invasion began.


The IAEA sought Thursday to clarify reports that the amount of missing
explosives may have been far less than what the Iraqis said in an Oct. 10
report to the nuclear agency.


ABC News, citing IAEA inspection documents, reported Wednesday night
that the Iraqis had declared 141 tons of RDX explosives at Al-Qaqaa in July
2002, but that the site held only three tons when it was checked in January
2003.


The network said that could suggest that 138 tons were removed from
the facility long before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
But Fleming said most of the RDX - about 125 tons - was kept at
Al-Mahaweel, a storage site under Al-Qaqaa's jurisdiction located outside the
main Al-Qaqaa site. She also said about 10 tons already had been reported by
Iraq as having been used for non-prohibited purposes between July 2002 and
January 2003.


''IAEA inspectors visited Al-Mahaweel on Jan. 15, 2003, and verified
the RDX inventory by weighing sampling,'' Fleming said. She said the RDX at
Al-Mahaweel was not under seal but was subject to IAEA monitoring.


''IAEA inspectors were in the process of verifying this statement ..
and would have proceeded later had they stayed in Iraq,'' Fleming said. The
nuclear agency's inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the U.S.-led
invasion and have not been allowed to return for general inspections despite
ElBaradei's requests that they be allowed to finish their work.


The agency became involved at Al-Qaqaa because of the presence of 214
tons of HMX, which - like RDX - is a key component in plastic explosives but
also can be used as an ignitor on a nuclear weapon. Fleming said it was the
HMX that was the agency's main focus.


IAEA inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took
an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers. Inspectors visited the
site again in March 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals
were not broken, she said.


Agency inspectors who have returned twice to Iraq since the war
focused only on Tuwaitha, a sprawling nuclear complex 12 miles south of
Baghdad.


In June 2003, inspectors investigated reports of widespread looting of
storage rooms at Tuwaitha, and they returned in August 2003 to take inventory
of several tons of natural uranium that had been stored there.



They have not been allowed back to Al-Qaqaa.

On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org<http://www.iaea.org/>

© 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



  • [Homestead] not iminding *that* store, either, Toni Hawryluk, 10/28/2004

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