Is US Spreading Old Reactor Parts Around Iraq to 'Prove' WMD?

By
Hossam Al-Sayed
Islam Oline
20 April 2004

Other Breaking News Four separate explosions at Iraqi and British security facilities killed at least 56 people in and around the relatively calm southern city of Basra Wednesday. According to preliminary unconfirmed reports, another 238 people were wounded. British authorities, who are stationed in the area, told the BBC that at least some of the attacks appeared to be the work of suicide bombers. Among the casualties, wire services reported, were Iraqi schoolchildren. The BBC reported that two school buses were hit. The targets included a joint British-Iraqi police station, two Iraqi police facilities and a police academy in the town of Zubair, 16 miles south of Basra, according to early reports. Two British soldiers were wounded in the attack on the academy, the BBC said, quoting British officials. Read here for more

Parts of Iraq’s neutralized nuclear reactor have been resettled somewhere in the far-reaching country, according to an Iraqi scientist

“This can help the United States find a way out of the current limbo of failing to come across a sniff of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction,” the central rationale of the U.S.-led war one year ago, said the source, who asked not to be named.

Material and equipment from the facility, some 40 kilometers from Baghdad, have also disappeared and been looted under the watchful eye of the U.S.-led occupation troops, well-placed sources here told IOL.

Backed by U.S. warplanes, gunmen disembarked frequently from unidentified jets in the location of the Osirak reactor, looting some of its material, the sources at the Iraqi Atomic Agency (IAA) said.

They noted that some IAA scientists reported the incident to the U.S.-led occupation authorities, asking for a protection to the facility and its depots. The request fell on deaf ears as a U.S. Let. Gen. told the scientists “it is none of your business”, according to the source. “They [the gunmen] were instructed by someone from his KIA and tampering with the reactor under U.S. protection,” another Iraqi scientist, who requested anonymity, told IOL.

“I myself happened on some non-registered materials in the reactor.” he added. “We complained umpteen times to the U.S. occupation troops, who eventually denied us access to the facility.” An Iraqi translator working for the occupation troops confirmed the incident, claiming that the gunmen were Israelis.

He asserted that they dismantled parts of the Russian-made reactor, which was struck by Israeli warplanes in 1981 in a preemptive strike to undermine Iraq’s nuclear capabilities. The translator added that the parts were rushed to unknown destinations in armored vehicles.

On Friday, April 16, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Mohammed ElBardei said he was concerned about the disappearance of nuclear material from the occupied country. Baradei said in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on the findings, which were based on satellite images.

The U.N. Security Council was also kept posted on the situation in another letter from ElBaradei. According to the letter, satellite imagery shows “extensive removal of equipment and in some instances, removal of entire buildings”. in Iraq. “Large quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq,” it added.

“It is not clear whether the removal of these items has been the result of looting activities in the aftermath of the recent war in Iraq or as part of systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of their locations,” ElBaradei said in his letter.

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