US quietly sneaks uranium out of Iraq

8.15am - By IRWIN ARIEFF

NEW YORK - The United States has spirited 1.8 tonnes of enriched uranium out of Iraq for safekeeping, more than a year after looters stole it from a UN-sealed facility left unguarded by US troops, US and UN officials said on Wednesday.

The slightly enriched uranium, which could be used in a dirty bomb, was airlifted to an undisclosed US site after its removal from the Tuwaitha nuclear complex south of Baghdad, a one-time centre of Iraq's nuclear weapons development programme.

US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham called the shipment to a secure Department of Energy facility "a major achievement for the Bush administration's goal to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists."

"It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons," Abraham said in a printed statement making no reference to the looting.

Washington suspects Iraq's neighbours Iran and Syria of harbouring ambitions to develop nuclear arms.

The Tuwaitha nuclear complex was dismantled in the early 1990s after the first Gulf War. However, tonnes of nuclear materials remained there, under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog agency, until the second Gulf War, when it was left unguarded by the US-led invading forces and looted by Iraqi civilians.

In June 2003, after repeated IAEA warnings that the looted materials could be used to make weapons, an embarrassed United States allowed an IAEA team to return to the site to try to gather them up.

Alarms had been raised as villagers near Tuwaitha, especially children, showed symptoms of radiation sickness.

Much of the material, the IAEA experts found, had been dumped on the ground by residents more interested in the containers than the materials themselves.

The IAEA team managed to account for all but some 40kg of the 1.8 tonnes of uranium, which had been enriched to 2.6 per cent uranium-235. That level of enrichment makes the material suitable for use in a dirty bomb or -- with further enrichment -- a nuclear weapon.

A dirty bomb is a device that uses a conventional explosive to disperse radioactive material over a wide area.

The team wrote off the remaining missing material as so small an amount as to pose no security threat.

The Energy Department said it seized the materials "consistent with its authorities and relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions," and removed them from Iraq "to ensure the safety and security of the Iraqi people."

However, IAEA officials said the United States lacked the legal authority to seize the materials.

"Now that the Americans have taken it, the IAEA has no access to it and no right to account for it or inspect it," said one agency official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

While the IAEA was given advance notice in June 2003 of Washington's intention to sneak the materials out of Iraq, it was asked to keep quiet due to security concerns.

The agency next learned, a week ago, that the transfer had taken place on June 23, 2004, the IAEA said in a letter to the UN Security Council made public on Wednesday.

The United States also removed from Iraq nearly 3kg of other stores of uranium "of various low enrichments" and some 1000 "highly radioactive sources" used in medicine and industrial processes, the Energy Department said.

Iraqi officials were briefed and "radiological sources that continue to serve useful medical, agricultural or industrial purposes were not removed from Iraq," the department said.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq