Iraqi nukes declaration ‘old material’

MOST of Iraq’s nuclear weapons declaration is old material, and only 300 pages in Arabic are believed to contain new information, the chief of the UN atomic energy agency said yesterday.

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.