Iraqi nukes declaration ‘old material’
He also said it will take up to a year to come to a “credible conclusion.” Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in charge of hunting for nuclear arms in Iraq, said 2,100 of the dossier’s 2,400 pages “is material we already had before.”
“The new part is 300 pages in Arabic that covers activities in 1991 until 2002. Part of it we also know. However, there is additional information we are going through right now,” Mr ElBaradei said in Vienna. “We expect that by next Tuesday, we will provide the Security Council with a sanitised copy of that report. We are sanitising that report and we are doing detailed analysis,” he said.
“Iraq has said they have not taken part in any nuclear weapons activities. Of course we must verify that statement. The process will take time but you need to bear with us because if successful, this is the best way of ensuring that Iraq disarms.” Iraq has said it has no weapons of mass destruction. Inspectors with the IAEA and the New York-based UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Mission have been fanning out across the country in search of nuclear, biological or chemical agents and the means to produce them.
“Iraq claims they have no been involved in any proscribed activities in the last four years. We cannot take that statement at face value,” Mr ElBaradei said, adding that further inspections were necessary to confirm or refute Baghdad’s insistence that it poses no threat. Despite his agency’s push for preliminary findings and a quick analysis of Iraq’s declaration, “it will take us something like a year before we can come to any credible conclusion,” he cautioned. The UN inspections have resumed under a new Security Council resolution requiring Iraq to report on nuclear, biological, chemical and missile research and production.
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