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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

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/> 

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