The UN nuclear watchdog expressed concern yesterday at the disappearance of high-precision equipment from Iraq's nuclear facilities that could be used to make nuclear weapons.
Mr Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency
In a letter to the UN Security Council, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr Mohamed ElBaradei, said some industrial material that Iraq sent overseas has been located in other countries but not high-precision items including milling machines and electron beam welders that have both commercial and military uses.
"As the disappearance of such equipment and materials may be of proliferation significance, any state that has information about the location of such items should provide IAEA with that information," the agency's director-general said.
IAEA inspectors left Iraq just before the March 2003 US-led war. US President George Bush's administration then barred UN weapons inspectors from returning, deploying US teams in an unsuccessful search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Nonetheless, IAEA teams were allowed into Iraq in June 2003 to investigate reports of widespread looting of storage rooms at the main nuclear complex at Tuwaitha, and in August to take inventory of "several tons" of natural uranium in storage near Tuwaitha.
Mr ElBaradei told the council that Iraq is still obliged, under IAEA agreements, "to declare semi-annually changes that have occurred or are foreseen at sites deemed relevant by the agency."
But since March 2003 "the agency has received no such notifications or declarations from any state," he said.
As a result of the IAEA's ongoing review of satellite photos and follow-up investigations, Mr El Baradei said: "the IAEA continues to be concerned about the widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program and sites previously subject to ongoing monitoring and verification by the agency."
"The imagery shows in many instances the dismantlement of entire buildings that housed high precision equipment . . . formerly monitored and tagged with IAEA seals, as well as the removal of equipment and materials (such as high-strength aluminium from open storage areas," he said.
In a report to the Security Council in early September, the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which is charged with overseeing the elimination of any banned Iraqi missile, chemical and biological weapons programs, also expressed concern about the disappearance of tagged equipment.
The Science and Technology Minister in Iraq's interim government Mr Rashad Omar later invited UN inspectors to return to the country but insisted any materials under his department's control were secure.
"We are transparent. We are happy for the IAEA or any other organisation to come and inspect," he said. Nothing had gone missing since a looting spree after last year's US-led invasion, he insisted.