Iraq has conceded to U.N. weapons inspectors that it tried to bypass a U.N. embargo to purchase special materials for a conventional rocket program, CNN reported today.  Iraqi officials told the United Nations in a Nov. 19 meeting that it attempted to smuggle special aluminum tubing into the country about a half dozen times, but never successfully, according to a high-ranking official close to the U.N. inspectors (see GSN, Sept. 9).

The Iraqi officials reported the diameter and thickness of the tubing they tried to procure and said that those dimensions precluded the tubes from being used to develop nuclear weapons.  Arms experts agreed that if the dimensions provided by Iraq are accurate, the tubing could not be used in uranium enrichment centrifuges, CNN reported (see GSN, Sept. 19).

“They’re saying that they violated the sanctions, which is a much lesser offense than if they had been trying to build nuclear weapons or long-range missiles,” former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack told CNN.  “What they are trying to do is to basically plead guilty to the lesser charge in hopes that that will make it much harder for the United States to use that to build international support for a war,” Pollack said.

U.N. inspectors are looking for a more complete accounting of Iraqi weapons efforts by Dec. 8, the deadline for Iraq to submit a full accounting of its weapons activities (CNN.com, Dec. 2).

Inspections Continue

Meanwhile, inspectors conducted their fifth day of inspections in Iraq today, including the first site never visited by previous inspectors.  Officials reported that Iraq has so far cooperated fully with inspectors by providing immediate access to installations, employees and records (BBC Online, Dec. 2). 

According to various reports, experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have visited about 15 sites near Baghdad in this round of post-Gulf War inspections that resumed Wednesday after a four-year lapse.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said yesterday that inspections have gone smoothly and have found nothing suspicious.  “What we have seen so far is that the facilities are not used for weapons programs,” he said (CNN.com, Dec. 2).

Inspectors inspected a former Scud missile component factory in Baghdad today and a distillery near Bakuba, north of Baghdad.  The inspectors did not explain why they visited the distillery, but alcohol is a common ingredient in chemical weapons, according to experts.

U.N. and IAEA teams have visited about 15 facilities since Wednesday, including sites that played past roles in Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs as well as Iraq’s ballistic missile development and production effort.  All but one of the sites, the distillery, had been inspected and monitored by previous inspectors before they withdrew from Iraq in 1998 citing Iraqi obstructions (BBC Online).

Wednesday

International experts visited three sites Wednesday, including an industrial engineering facility, a graphite production plant and a missile test site.

The al-Tahidi Scientific Research Center, 12 miles northeast of Baghdad, assembles electric motors for cement factories and oil refineries, Iraqi officials said, but U.S. officials believe the site was historically associated with Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, according to the Washington Post.

Former senior U.N. Special Commission on Iraq official Charles Duelfer told a U.S. Senate committee in February that al-Tahidi was one of the “key facilities where (nuclear weapons) congregated.”

“These centers have legitimate rationales for their ongoing work, but the presence of teams of alumni from the nuclear weapons programs is a key tip-off,” Duelfer said.

Seven IAEA representatives spent three hours at al-Tahidi speaking with workers, examining documents and removing an air sampler installed by IAEA inspectors in 1998.

Elsewhere, UNMOVIC inspectors visited al-Rafah a complex containing a graphite production facility and a missile test stand about 15 miles southwest of Baghdad.  They hoped the missile test facility would offer clues as to whether Iraq is developing ballistic missiles with ranges exceeding the 150-kilometer limit established by the U.N. Security Council (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Nov. 28).

The CIA accused Iraq in October of erecting a test stand that would only be necessary to test larger, prohibited missiles, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Dimitri Perricos, a senior UNMOVIC official, said the graphite plant visit was needed because graphite could be used not only to make pencils, but also missile batteries and re-entry vehicle nose cones (Los Angeles Times, Nov. 28).

Thursday

Fourteen UNMOVIC inspectors traveled Thursday to the al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Disease Vaccine Production Laboratory, about 15 kilometers south of Baghdad to investigate the site where Iraq produced botulinum toxin before the 1991 Gulf War.  Officials were interested in the site because Iraq has never accounted for all the toxin it produced there and a British intelligence assessment released this year said there were suspicions of recent activity at the site (see GSN, Sept. 24).

Following four hours of inspection, however, the U.N. experts concluded that the plant was no longer operational, for any purposes, according to the New York Times.  It had apparently been abandoned in 1996 after U.N. officials dismantled the facility’s fermenters, containers, pressurized tubing and other equipment, the Times reported.

Also on Thursday, IAEA experts inspected an industrial complex at al-Nasr, were uranium enrichment centrifuge rotors were once manufactured as well as missile engine parts.   The facility had been heavily bombed after U.N. inspectors withdrew from Iraq in 1998 and has since been partially restored.  IAEA team leader Jacques Baute, however, said a newly constructed building identified by U.S. intelligence as suspicious appeared to be inactive.  “As far as we observed today, it seemed to be very empty,” Baute said (John Burns, New York Times, Nov. 29).

Parts of the plant that remain working are used to produce light ammunition and heavy civilian machinery, Iraqi officials said (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Nov. 29.

Saturday

After remaining inactive Friday, inspectors set out again Saturday, visiting three sites.  UNMOVIC experts drove 90 kilometers north of Baghdad to the Balad Chemical Defense Battalion, where the Iraqi Defense Ministry trains troops to defend against WMD attacks.

UNMOVIC spokesman Hiro Ueki said the inspectors wanted to “see if any evidence of chemical weapons agents biological weapons agents were present and to see if there was any new equipment.”

The site had been inspected in the 1990s, but it was considered to be a “sensitive” site, requiring advance notification of U.N. inspections.

The inspectors spent five hours examining storage sheds, opening ordnance crates and using handheld sensors.

Meanwhile, eight IAEA experts visited two dual-use equipment production facilities, the first at Um al-Maarik, a machine tool factory which Iraqi officials said only produces parts for light machinery and vehicles.

The experts also inspected the facility at al-Meelad, formerly known as al-Furat, where centrifuge were developed.  Recent satellite imagery indicated that construction has taken place at the site since 1998 (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Dec. 1).

Sunday

Acting on satellite imagery analysis, UNMOVIC inspectors visited a cropdusting facility Sunday at Khan Beni-Saad, 35 kilometers north of Baghdad, where pesticide-spraying helicopters are based.  The satellite information “called for a specific investigation of modified aircraft fuel tanks,” according to a U.N. spokesman (Agence France-Presse, Yahoo.com, Dec. 2). 

Onsite for five hours, the inspectors examined aircraft hangars, chemical tanks and spray nozzles at the facility.  They took samples from the tanks and downloaded files from the base director’s computer (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Dec. 2)

A second team of UNMOVIC experts inspected the large al-Taji complex that houses the bin Firnas and al-Quds missile production facilities.  “We gave the inspectors every assistance and answered all their questions,” said bin Firnas director Brahim Hussein (Agence France-Presse, Yahoo.com).

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