Bush accused as Saddam's explosives disappear

Several hundred tons of conventional explosives are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the UN nuclear watchdog said today.

The revelation was immediately seized on by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign team who accused President George Bush of failing to keep the explosives “out of the hands of our enemies".

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei was reporting the disappearance to the UN Security Council today, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

“On October 10, the IAEA received a declaration from the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology informing us that approximately 350 (metric) tons of high explosive material had gone missing,” Fleming said.

“The most immediate concern here is that these explosives could have fallen into the wrong hands,” she said.

In Washington, the Kerry campaign said the Bush administration “must answer for what may be the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq.”

“How did they fail to secure ... tons of known, deadly explosives despite clear warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency to do so?” senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart said.

The Iraqis told the nuclear agency the materials had been stolen and looted from the Al-Qaqaa site because of a lack of security at governmental installations, Fleming said.

“We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted,” she added.

Al-Qaqaa is located near Youssifiyah, an area rife with ambush attacks. An Associated Press TV News crew which drove past the compound today saw no visible security at the gates of the site, a jumble of low-slung, yellow-coloured storage buildings that appeared deserted.

More than 344 tons of powerful explosives that could be used to build large conventional bombs are missing from Al-Qaqaa, The New York Times reported. The 344 tons is the equivalent of the figure of 350 metric tons mentioned by the Iraqis, the IAEA said.

The newspaper said the explosives disappeared after the US led invasion of Iraq last year.

They included HMX and RDX, which can be used to demolish buildings and down jetliners but also produce warheads for missiles and detonate nuclear weaponry.

The material is a key ingredient in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex - substances so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just a pound to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, killing 170 people.

Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, was informed of the missing explosives in the past month, the report said. It said Iraq’s interim government recently warned the United States and UN nuclear inspectors that the explosives had vanished.

Before the war, inspectors with the Vienna-based IAEA had kept tabs on the so-called “dual use” explosives because they could have been used to detonate a nuclear weapon. Experts say HMX can be used to create a highly powerful explosion with enough intensity to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.

IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the 2003 invasion and have not yet been able to return despite ElBaradei’s repeated urging that the experts be allowed back in to finish their work.

ElBaradei told the UN Security Council before the war that Iraq’s nuclear programme was in disarray and that there was no evidence to suggest it had revived efforts to build atomic weaponry.

Al-Qaqaa, a sprawling former military installation 30 miles south of Baghdad, was placed under US military control but has been looted repeatedly, raising troubling questions about whether the missing explosives have fallen into the hands of insurgents battling coalition forces.

Saddam was known to have used the site to make conventional warheads, and IAEA inspectors dismantled parts of his nuclear program there before the 1991 Gulf War. The experts also oversaw the destruction of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons.

The nuclear agency pulled out of Iraq in 1998, and by the time it returned in 2002, it confirmed that 35 tons of HMX that had been placed under IAEA seal were missing. HMX and RDX are the key components in plastic explosives, which insurgents have widely used in a series of bloody car bombings in Iraq.

“These explosives can be used to blow up airplanes, level buildings, attack our troops and detonate nuclear weapons,” said Kerry spokesman Lockhart.

“The Bush administration knew where this stockpile was, but took no action to secure the site. They were urgently and specifically informed that terrorists could be helping themselves to the most dangerous explosives bonanza in history, but nothing was done to prevent it from happening,” he said.

“This material was monitored and controlled by UN inspectors before the invasion of Iraq. Thanks to the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration, we now have no idea where it is,” Lockhart said. He demanded the White House explain “why they failed to safeguard these explosives and keep them out of the hands of our enemies.”