Saddam 'scouting for nuclear bomb material'

Saddam Hussein is relying on an army of spies to help him realise his dream of building a nuclear bomb, defence analysts said today.

Undercover agents working for the Iraqi dictator will be scouring backwaters of the former USSR and other countries in search of the weapons-grade material he crucially needs.

Many will be travelling on non-Iraqi passports and could have links to organised crime, said Thomas Withington, of King’s College London.

Saddam is looking abroad because his own nuclear programme is “years off” producing material he could use in a warhead, according to a report today by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The only way he could create a nuclear bomb in a hurry is to buy or steal weapons-grade uranium or plutonium from another country.

Nations along the periphery of the former USSR nuclear superpower, such as Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, will be prime targets for the tyrant.

Although none of those governments would be likely to sanction a sale to Iraq, there has long been concern over security at their nuclear sites.

Mr Withington said: “I don’t think any country would willingly give material away but the question is how easy it is to steal. Some of these places aren’t very secure.

“There is also the possibility of organised crime being involved. There must be plenty of underworld barons who would gladly take Saddam’s millions if they could pull off a raid on a nuclear store.”

Defence analyst Major Charles Heyman added: “Saddam will have guys running around all over the place, not necessarily on Iraqi passports.

“They will be talking to middle men and trying to find a way to get hold of some material and get it back to Iraq. It may be that they could use ex-Russian pilots, for example.”

The operation would cost Saddam millions of dollars but he is not short of cash from the funds he has managed to skim off the oil-for-food programme, now running into billions of dollars.

But even if he did manage to acquire a quantity of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium, he would still face massive technical challenges.

Mr Withington said: “He has still got to be able to machine it properly to fashion it so it would actually work. A nuke is a very difficult thing to manufacture.”

It was far from clear whether numerous nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan over the past few years had been successful, and Iraq had not even got that far, he pointed out.

A more achievable alternative, if Saddam got his hands on some raw material, was to build a “dirty” bomb, using conventional explosives to spread radioactive particles.