ELBARADEIâS REPORT MISLEADS THE SECURITY COUNCIL
ON IRAQâS NUCLEAR WEAPONS POTENTIAL
WashingtonâIAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradeiâs report today to the U.N. Security Council failed to address Iraqâs potential for rapidly assembling nuclear weapons in a small, concealable plant if it were able to smuggle in stolen plutonium or bomb-grade uranium, according to Paul Leventhal, president emeritus of the Nuclear Control Institute.
âElBaradeiâs report today, like his previous report last month, asserted that the International Atomic Energy Agency had eliminated Iraqâs nuclear weapons program before IAEA inspectors left Iraq in 1998, and that it is only a matter of time before the IAEA re-certifies that Iraqâs ability to make nuclear weapons is âdefunctâ,â Leventhal said. âThis is a dangerously misleading statement because it ignores the IAEA's own detailed pre-'98 reporting that Iraqi nuclear weapon designs and most non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons were never accounted for. Yet, the agency concluded then, and still asserts today, that it âmanaged to remove or destroy or render harmless all nuclear items that came to our knowledge.ââ
In this manner, Leventhal said, âthe IAEA has misled the public into believing that Iraq no longer constitutes a nuclear threat.â
Leventhal continued: âEven if the IAEA is correct in determining that Iraq has not reconstituted its capacity for production of nuclear weapons materials, it is incorrect for the agency to suggest that no other nuclear weapons threat remains in Iraq. Neither the nuclear knowledge that Iraq developed before and after the Gulf War, nor the nuclear scientists and engineers who developed that knowledge, have disappeared. It is prudent to assume that they have not been spending their time making halvah.
âElBaradei should acknowledge that these assets still exist and could be applied rapidly to build nuclear weapons if Iraq acquires stolen plutonium or bomb-grade uranium---assuming it has not done so already. The agency has admitted that it is extremely difficult to detect the smuggling into Iraq of the relatively small quantities of these materials needed for building weapons. Nuclear weapons could be assembled in a single room if the explosive lenses and other non-nuclear components were prepared in advance, requiring only the final fashioning of the fissile material for the weapons. Such a room is readily concealable from radiological and other detection.
âUnless the IAEA is candid in describing Iraqâs nuclear potential the Security Council and the public at large will not have the information it needs to understand the extent of the Iraqi nuclear threat and what must be done about it. Given the IAEAâs past failures to detect a nuclear weapons program in Iraq, ElBaradei would serve both the interests of his agency and of the world by demonstrating more humility and candor in his reporting on Iraq.â
Earlier NCI reports on the IAEAâs inspections in Iraq
can be found on the NCI website at
http://www.nci.org/sadb.htm
Of particular interest:
http://www.nci.org/02NCI/09/iraq-pr9302002.htm ;
http://www.nci.org/02NCI/09/iraq-fs-925-draft.htm ;
http://www.nci.org/new/iraq-ib.htm
