US and UN clash over Iraqi nuclear find

Indirectly challenging a US argument for war on Iraq, the UN atomic agency said today that the discovery of parts from Baghdad’s original nuclear weapons programme appears to back its stance that the project was not reactivated.

The comments reflected the ongoing dispute between the UN and Washington over whether Saddam was trying to make weapons of mass destruction.

The White House argued such programmes existed in going to war against Baghdad, while UN inspectors said their searches on the ground turned up no evidence of such programs.

A US intelligence official revealed last night that they were inspecting parts and documents from an Iraqi weapons programme run in the early 1990s that were handed over by a former Iraqi nuclear scientist.

The scientist, Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, said he had kept the parts buried under rose bushes in his Baghdad garden on the orders of Saddam Hussein’s government. Once sanctions against Iraq ended, the material was to be dug up and used to reconstitute a programme to enrich uranium to make a nuclear weapon, Obeidi said.

The intelligence official acknowledged the find was not the “smoking gun” the US is seeking to prove claims that Iraq had an active programme to develop a nuclear weapon.

In Vienna today, the International Atomic Energy Agency suggested the revelations tended to prove the opposite.

“The findings and comments of Obeidi appear to confirm that there has been no post-1991 nuclear weapons programme in Iraq and are consistent with our reports to the Security Council,” said agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky.

The IAEA has long monitored Iraq’s nuclear programmes and has questioned US claims that Saddam was reviving his nuclear weapons programme.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, said early on there was no evidence to support Washington’s claims, and other inspectors found no signs of biological or chemical weapons.

Since the war, US teams looking for evidence of Iraq’s alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes have been chasing leads and tips from Iraqis who stand to win reward money offered for evidence. So far no weapons have been found.

Before the second Gulf War, US and allied intelligence agencies said they had evidence that Iraq was seeking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programme, although some of that evidence has since been debunked.