IAEA Says It Warned U.S. on Iraq Ammo

IAEA Says It Warned U.S. on Iraq Ammo
Thursday, October 28, 2004

WASHINGTON — The U.N. nuclear agency said Thursday it warned the United States about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Iraq's Al-Qaqaa military installation after another facility — Iraq's main nuclear complex — was looted in April 2003.

Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency , told The Associated Press that U.S. officials were cautioned directly about what was stored at Al-Qaqaa, the main high explosives facility in Iraq.

Some 377 tons of high explosives are now missing from the facility, said by Iraqi officials to have been taken amid looting. Questions have arisen about what the United States knew about Al-Qaqaa and what it did to secure the site.

Fleming did not say which officials were notified or exactly when, but she said the IAEA — which had put storage bunkers at the site under seal just before the war — alerted the United States after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted.

"After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April 2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspectors alerted American officials that we were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa," she told the AP.

"It is also important to note that this was the main high explosives storage facility in Iraq, and it was well-known through IAEA reports to the Security Council," Fleming said.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei informed the United Nations in February 2003, and again in April of that year, that he was concerned about HMX explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa.

The explosives' disappearance has become a flashpoint in the final week of the U.S. presidential campaign, with Democratic hopeful John Kerry accusing the Bush administration of ignoring the threat and the White House. The Pentagon has suggested that Saddam Hussein's regime may have removed the explosives before the war began.

IAEA inspectors reportedly last confirmed that the agency's seals on the explosives were in place and intact on March 15, five days before the invasion began.

The IAEA sought Thursday to clarify reports that the amount of missing explosives may have been far less than what the Iraqis said in an Oct. 10 report to the nuclear agency.

ABC News, citing IAEA inspection documents, reported Wednesday night that the Iraqis had declared 141 tons of RDX explosives at Al-Qaqaa in July 2002, but that the site held only three tons when it was checked in January 2003.

The network said that could suggest that 138 tons were removed from the facility long before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

But Fleming said most of the RDX — about 125 tons — was kept at Al-Mahaweel, a storage site under Al-Qaqaa's jurisdiction located outside the main Al-Qaqaa site. She also said about 10 tons already had been reported by Iraq as having been used for non-prohibited purposes between July 2002 and January 2003.

"IAEA inspectors visited Al-Mahaweel on Jan. 15, 2003, and verified the RDX inventory by weighing sampling," Fleming said. She said the RDX at Al-Mahaweel was not under seal but was subject to IAEA monitoring.

"IAEA inspectors were in the process of verifying this statement ... and would have proceeded later had they stayed in Iraq," Fleming said. The nuclear agency's inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the U.S.-led invasion and have not been allowed to return for general inspections despite ElBaradei's requests that they be allowed to finish their work.

The agency became involved at Al-Qaqaa because of the presence of 214 tons of HMX, which — like RDX — is a key component in plastic explosives but also can be used as an ignitor on a nuclear weapon. Fleming said it was the HMX that was the agency's main focus.

IAEA inspectors last saw the explosives in January 2003 when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers. Inspectors visited the site again in March 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said.

Agency inspectors who have returned twice to Iraq since the war focused only on Tuwaitha, a sprawling nuclear complex 12 miles south of Baghdad.

In June 2003, inspectors investigated reports of widespread looting of storage rooms at Tuwaitha, and they returned in August 2003 to take inventory of several tons of natural uranium that had been stored there. They have not been allowed back to Al-Qaqaa.

Additional Personal Commentary: According to the IAEA's final report on al-Qaqaa, they said that while the doors had been secured with seals, the windows and ventilations systems still allowed for looters to enter the bunkers and they did nothing to preclude that entry. It is also speculated the Russian Secret Service were the entity which moved the weapons at the order of Putin who wanted to eliminate any evidence of Russia assisting Iraq.