Colombia Backs Off “Dirty Bomb” Statement

The vice president of Colombia said yesterday he had not meant to suggest during a speech that rebels battling his government were seeking a radiological “dirty bomb,” the Associated Press reported (see GSN, March 5).

Francisco Santos told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Tuesday that information taken from two computers indicated that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia was seeking radioactive material, “the primary basis of generating dirty weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.”  His statement was widely reported as alleging that the leftist rebel group wanted a weapon that would combine conventional explosives with radioactive material.

However, Santos told AP that the computer information indicated the rebels’ interest in uranium rather than their intent to develop a radiological weapon.

“What I said was, ‘Take note.  To put the FARC and the word uranium in the same sentence is to make anyone’s hair stand up,” he said.  “Don’t take it lightly.”

An FBI spokesman said the agency has “no information or intelligence regarding the FARC attempting to use WMD.”

One laptop computer recovered during a Colombian military raid on a FARC site in Ecuador included a document on “the matter of the uranium.”  It seemingly indicated that the rebel group had the opportunity to buy 50 kilograms or more of uranium.

The computer and other sources have offered no additional indication that the group wants to acquire radioactive material or weapons of mass destruction.  It is also not obvious that FARC commander Edgar Tovar is discussing uranium in the document, AP reported.  Santos said, though, that “this sounds like processed uranium.”

Processed uranium is more expensive and more dangerous than the relatively safe unprocessed form of the material, said Charles Ferguson, a physicist at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“If it were weapon-grade, highly enriched uranium, I’d be freaking out because you can make a low-yield improvised nuclear device from that,” he said.  However, “I’m not aware of any highly enriched uranium in appreciable quantities in the region of Colombia, Venezuela or anywhere else near there” (Frank Bajak, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 5).

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