An International Atomic Energy Agency team completed its nuclear inspection mission in Iraq and left Baghdad early today (see GSN, Jan. 16).

The IAEA mission was to inspect Iraqi nuclear installations to ensure the country's stockpile of 1.5 tons of nonweapon-grade uranium has not been disturbed. Anzrey Pietruzewski, head of the IAEA team, did not provide any details on the team's findings.

“Our task is just to collect all the results, pass the results to the IAEA in Vienna,” Pietruzewski said. “All the results will be evaluated there ... and provided to the Iraqi authorities” (Xinhua News Agency, Jan. 31).

At the beginning of the visit Friday, Pietruzewski called the mission “a safeguard inspection like it was last year,” when an IAEA team found Iraq had not touched its uranium stockpile. IAEA inspections are not connected to the U.N. inspection program, the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM), which was halted in 1998 (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 31).

There are currently 180 U.N. weapons inspectors ready to resume inspections if Iraq agrees to their return, according to BBC Online.

"We're preparing all the time," said Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which replaced UNSCOM.

U.S. President George W. Bush recently said he will "deal with [Hussein] at the appropriate time" unless the Iraqi chief allows U.N. inspectors back into the country to make sure it is not developing weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Nov. 14, 2001).

The IAEA removed more than 22 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium from Iraq in the early 1990s and was by 1998 convinced it had found all of Iraq's stockpiles of weapon-grade uranium. The agency also destroyed several Iraqi uranium-enrichment facilities, according to BBC Online.

Since 1998, however, the IAEA has verified only stockpiles at a research center at Tuwaitha.

"We're not able to go beyond looking at this material and ensuring it remains under the IAEA seal," said IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. "We cannot provide assurances that Iraq is not pursuing a new secret nuclear program. ... At the time of the Gulf War, [Iraq was] very close, possibly one or two years away, from having a nuclear bomb. Now, we have no way of knowing what they're doing" (Caroline Hawley, BBC News, Jan. 26).

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