AUSTRIA: An International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman has minimised the possibility that Iraq could have obtained uranium from Africa to use in making nuclear weapons.
"We have safeguards in Africa on nuclear material and know when it goes missing," an agency spokesman, Mr Mark Gwozdecky, said yesterday at the agency's headquarters in Vienna.
He was reacting to the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, saying in the House of Commons in London on Tuesday that Iraq had sought "significant quantities of uranium from Africa". UN arms experts, including agency representatives and Iraqi officials, are to meet in Vienna on Monday and Tuesday to discuss resuming weapons inspections in Iraq.
The question of Iraq obtaining uranium from Africa is the latest wrinkle on the issue of how active Baghdad has been in trying to develop nuclear weapons.
In 1988, Italian police arrested 13 men trying to sell an irradiated fuel rod to the Mafia which had been stolen from a nuclear reactor in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Financial Times on Tuesday quoted nuclear industry sources as saying that a second uranium fuel rod which went missing from Kinshasa had never been found.
Mr Gwozdecky said these rods were in any case "low enriched uranium of no use in making a weapon. They would be a poor choice even for a dirty bomb. The content of a single fuel element is minuscule, not the significant quantity that is alleged in the Blair dossier," Mr Gwozdecky said.
He added that there was very little enriched uranium in Africa and that what was there "is under safeguards. If it goes missing we know of it in a short amount of time." He said these safeguards covered the Kinshasa reactor.
Mr Gwozdecky also said the atomic energy agency had "no information either way" on reports that al-Qaeda had tried to buy uranium from South Africa, which dismantled its weapons capability in 1991.
Mr Gwozdecky said that while the US was "not entirely comfortable with the talks going forward, I think they understand that the talks have to go forward before inspections can begin." He said the Iraqis had not yet confirmed if they would be coming to Vienna but had "agreed in principle" to the preparatory discussions.
Mr Hans Blix, the chief UN arms inspector for Iraq, told the Security Council in New York last week that he hoped to have an advance party in Iraq on October 15th. Mr Gwozdecky said it would take "weeks" once the UN experts arrived in Iraq to begin inspections.
The agency provides an "action team" to check for nuclear weapons programmes while the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which Mr Blix heads, checks for chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles.
In Germany, meanwhile, a government spokesman said the British dossier on Iraq was being studied "to see if there was anything new in it which may not have been known to the federal government". - (AFP)