Iraqis 'closer to building nuclear-bomb'

LONDON - An exiled Iraqi nuclear scientist believes Iraq is closer to building an atomic bomb than previously thought, a British newspaper said yesterday.

The Times said Dr Khidir Hamza, described as a top Iraqi nuclear researcher who fled to the West in 1994, believed Iraq was able to make copies of a German-built centrifuge and use them to enrich uranium to produce a nuclear bomb.

The German-built centrifuge was dismantled by international arms inspectors before they were withdrawn from Iraq in 1998. But Hamza told the Times Iraqi scientists had learned how to copy the centrifuge.

"We videoed as it was put up, so we could build identical ones," the paper quoted him as saying.

"When the inspectors took away the original centrifuge, we already had the know-how. I believe there are probably hundreds of copies today."

The Times said "experts" believed the centrifuge method would take four to seven years to make enough nuclear material for a bomb. The programme may have begun in earnest when the inspectors left in December 1998, or even earlier, Hamza said.

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush's chief economic adviser estimates that the US may have to spend between US$100 billion and US$200 billion to wage an Iraq war, but doubts hostilities would push the nation into recession or sustained inflation, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House's National Economic Council, projected the "upper bound" of war costs at between 1 per cent and 2 per cent of gross domestic product. The US GDP is at about US$10 trillion per year.

- REUTERS

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