UN nuclear inspectors are set to visit sites related to Libya's atomic weapons programme today as the agency gears up for full-scale inspections in the North African state.
A team of inspectors from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), led by IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei, arrived in Tripoli yesterday just over a week after Libya acknowledged developing banned weapons -- including atomic arms.
One diplomat close to the delegation said he did not know what sites the Libyans would show them today, but assumed they would be related to whatever weapons-related activities they had been conducting.
The Libyans said they had been working on a pilot scale centrifuge uranium-enrichment programme but had not enriched any uranium. Enrichment is a process of purifying uranium for use as nuclear fuel or in weapons.
Libya's Foreign Minister Mohamed Abderrhmane Chalgam told a news conference that Tripoli had never crossed the line from laboratory experiments into actual weaponisation.
El-Baradei is expected to stay in Tripoli until tomorrow. He is scheduled to meet with the deputy prime minister in charge of the nuclear programme, the prime minister and, possibly, Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Some members of IAEA team will remain in Tripoli until Thursday and are expected to be shown "everything they need to see", a diplomat close to the delegation said.