Nuclear parts looted in Iraq

A US soldier searches an Iraqi ammunition bunker for signs of looting after the fall of Baghdad. Picture / Reuters

NEW YORK - Looters using cranes and trucks removed tonnes of equipment from Iraqi weapons facilities - including some with components capable of making parts of nuclear arms, says a senior Iraq official.

The New York Times yesterday reported that Iraq's Deputy Minister of Industry, Sami al-Araji, had outlined a highly organised operation in the weeks after Baghdad fell in 2003 which apparently pinpointed specific plants in a quest for valuable equipment.

Some of the stolen material had civilian and military applications.

"They came in with cranes and lorries and they depleted the whole sites," the newspaper quoted Dr Araji as saying.

"They knew what they were doing; they knew what they wanted; this was sophisticated looting."

Most of the looting occurred over four weeks between mid-April and mid-May in 2003 as teams with flatbed trucks moved around sites.

"The first wave came for machines. The second wave for cables and cranes. The third wave came for the bricks."

Dr Araji based his account chiefly on observations by Government employees and officials who worked at the sites or lived nearby.

The facilities, cited by United States President George W. Bush's Administration as a reason for invading Iraq, were left largely unguarded by troops after Baghdad fell.

Senior United Nations agency officials said satellite images confirmed that some of the sites said to have been looted did appear to be totally or partially stripped, the report said.

According to the newspaper, Dr Araji said equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from eight or 10 sites that were at the heart of Iraq's dormant unconventional weapons programme.

The Iraqi official said he had no evidence of where the equipment had ended up, but the black market or foreign Governments were possibilities, the Times said.

He believed the looters' primary motivation was making money, not weapons.

The White House said in response to Dr Araji's account that it was well known many weapons sites were looted. It had no other comment, the Times said.

The type of machinery at the looted sites included equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs.

But the equipment also had peaceful applications.

Reports of looting at the al-Qaqaa military facility south of Baghdad, one of the sites identified by Dr Araji, first surfaced during the US presidential campaign last October.

Then it was reported that nearly 350 tonnes of high explosives had vanished when it was supposed to be protected by US troops.

Dr Araji said the facility also contained a wide variety of weapons-making machinery.

Meanwhile, Iran has said it would never give up its nuclear fuel programme, despite a new policy of incentives and threats from Washington and the European Union.

The EU and Washington have spelled out a carrot and stick approach aimed at pressuring Tehran to give up sensitive activities such as uranium enrichment.

But Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Iran was determined to use peaceful nuclear technology and "no pressure, intimidation or threat can make Iran give up its right".

- REUTERS