U.S. arms control officials yesterday rejected an International Atomic Energy Agency request for access to Iraqi nuclear facilities at Tuwaitha, believed to be the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear weapons program.  Agency officials are seeking to return there to determine what materials may have been stolen during looting, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (see GSN, May 5).

IAEA officials criticized the U.S. decision, demanding access to conduct an “immediate inspection.”

“If this happened anywhere else in the world, we would demand an immediate inspection,” said agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky.  “We want an immediate inspection to determine what has been taken.  We also must place new safeguards over the material still remaining,” he said.

Gwozdecky warned that radioactive materials looted from the site could pose both environmental and security risks.

“We are concerned about environmental contamination, people who could have been exposed to the radioactive material, and whether nuclear security has been compromised,” Gwozdecky said.  “We do not want this material to end up with terrorists,” he added.

Nonproliferation experts also agreed that the possible looting of the Tuwaitha complex was a cause for concern.

“If you wanted to blow the entire operation in Iraq, a good way to do that would be to have haphazard security for known facilities where weapons of mass destruction were developed,” said Michael Barletta of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.  “It’s one thing to see people looting antiquities from museums.  It’s another to learn that radiological sources may have been taken out of Tuwaitha, the best known atomic weapons site in the entire country,” he said (Carl Prine, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, May 6).

The United States still has not determined if IAEA inspectors will be granted access to Iraqi nuclear sites, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.

“We have been in touch with the IAEA.  We’re in touch with them on various issues all the time,” Boucher said.  “But there is no decision at this point about what role they may or may not play in terms of evaluating and monitoring at this point,” he said.

Boucher refused to comment on reports of looting at Iraqi nuclear sites.  He instead said that coalition forces have worked to secure such sites and the materials they contain.

“Coalition forces have secured the facilities that housed the natural- and low-enriched uranium that was at those sites,” Boucher said.  “None of this material is usable in nuclear weapons.  All of this uranium would require significant processing in order to be suitable for enrichment for weapons use,” he said (U.S. State Department release, May 5).

Biological Weapons

Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected today to claim that the United States has found an Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratory, Defense Department officials said yesterday (see GSN, April 29).

Late last month, U.S. forces captured a truck south of Mosul and they suspected it contained a biological laboratory.  The truck has been determined to contain equipment to produce biological agents, but no such agents were found inside, Pentagon officials said.  Rumsfeld may cite the truck during a Pentagon press briefing today, they said (Jamie McIntyre, CNN.com, May 6).

U.S. forces have also taken into custody Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a senior biologist suspected of being highly involved in Iraq’s biological weapons program, according to a Pentagon official.

Ammash, a former dean of the Iraqi College of Women and later of the College of Science at Baghdad University, has long been believed to have been heavily involved in Iraq’s biological weapons efforts, according to the New York Times.  She traveled outside of Iraq several times in the late 1990s to obtain equipment and materials for genetic research, said former U.N. inspector Richard Spertzel. 

“Several defectors have also said that she was involved in the germ warfare program,” Spertzel said.

Nissar Hindawi, a founder of Iraq’s biological weapons program, has also said Ammash was involved in Iraq’s efforts to develop such weapons.  Hindawi said colleagues had told him that Ammash had escaped to Syria prior to the war along with Rihab Taha, another senior Iraqi biological weapons scientist.

U.S. military officials in Iraq would not comment on how Ammash was captured or when she was taken into custody (Judith Miller, New York Times, May 6).

Sanctions

The Bush administration is considering a proposal to unilaterally lift U.S. sanctions against Iraq without a similar move by the United Nations — a move likely to be opposed by many on the U.N. Security Council, according to the London Independent (see GSN, May 2).

A legal team headed by the National Security Council is examining such a move and its possible ramifications within international law, according to the Independent.  While the United States has called on the United Nations to lift sanctions against Iraq, several Security Council members have said inspectors must first determine if the country is free of weapons of mass destruction.

“If the U.N. embargo drags on too long, we will have to find a way out of that system,” a senior Bush administration official was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying (Rupert Cornwell, London Independent, May 6).

The United States is also working to create a “principal” Security Council resolution that would end sanctions against Iraq and create a “coordinating” role for the United Nations in Iraq’s reconstruction, the State Department said yesterday.  The first resolution would then be followed by several “auxiliary” measures aimed at various reconstruction tasks, the department said.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected to travel next week to three Security Council members — Bulgaria, Germany and Russia — to obtain support for the new resolution, according to the Washington Times.

“We’ve had some discussions of language at this point within the U.S. government and with a few of the other members of the council,” Boucher said.  “We expect to broaden this discussion in coming days and have discussion with other members of the council as soon as we can, as soon as we can have language for them,” he said (Nicholas Kralev, Washington Times, May 6). 

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