News & Politics > Briefs
edited by Lorna Tychostup

Coalition Forces Leave Iraqi Nuclear Sites Unguarded

After expressing concern “about the potential radiological safety and security implications of nuclear and radiological materials that may no longer be under control,” Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, was granted a limited return to Iraq. The IAEA nuclear weapons inspectors will assess damage to Iraq’s Tuwaitha nuclear research center, where reporters saw villagers removing storage barrels, dumping out their contents which matched the description of uranium oxide, and then filling the barrels with drinking water. Media reports have stated that residents near Tuwaitha have already begun to show symptoms of radiation sickness.

Beginning in early April, Dr. ElBaradei had repeatedly asked the United States to secure nuclear material stored at Iraq’s Tuwaitha nuclear research center. The Tuwaitha plant was thought to be a primary site where evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would be found, yet it was left unguarded for days during the war. When US inspection teams finally showed up to inspect the site it was reported that much had been destroyed or hauled away, leaving it impossible to determine what was missing. For several weeks, commanders of the five different US military teams assigned to finding Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction had said privately that they were operating without much needed info only privy to IAEA inspectors.

Once thought of as the center of Iraq’s nuclear program, but dormant in recent years, the sprawling Tuwaitha complex was used by Iraq to store many of the more than 1,000 declared and UN-sealed radioactive nuclear materials prohibited by the IAEA. Among the materials known to be stored there was caesium137, a highly radioactive powder that is especially dangerous when used in dirty bombs, which combine radioactive material with a conventional explosive like dynamite to spread it over a wide area. In addition, the IAEA was monitoring 2 tons of enriched uranium and several tons of natural and depleted uranium stored at Tuwaitha. Uranium, if enriched, is a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.

Dr. ElBaradei’s first request was sent on April 10th when he was promised by US officials that the coalition forces would keep the site secure. As media reports began surfacing with news about looting at Iraq’s nuclear facilities, he sent another request on April 29 asking that IAEA nuclear inspectors be allowed into Iraq to investigate the extent of the looting. It wasn’t until his third request, made in late May, that Dr. ElBaradei was given the OK by the US to re-enter Iraq with his team.

With IAEA citing the development of a “serious humanitarian situation,” Dr. ElBaradei said, “We have a moral responsibility to establish the facts without delay and take urgent remedial action.”

Over 200 IAEA inspectors spent more than three months at nearly 150 sites in Iraq before the war without finding evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program, as charged by the United States and Britain as a primary reason for attacking Iraq. To date, no weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, biological, or chemical—have been found.

—Lorna Tychostup Source: Reuters, AP