Iraq has tried since the middle of last year to acquire from abroad thousands of pieces of equipment that could be used only to produce enriched uranium, which is needed to manufacture nuclear weapons, US officials disclosed late on Saturday.
The officials, who spoke to wire service AFP on condition of anonymity, refused to name the country or countries where the government of President Saddam Hussein went on a nuclear shopping spree, or to reveal how Iraq intended to bring the equipment into Iraq.
But they said Baghdad was targeting aluminium tubes that are used exclusively in centrifuges that produce enriched uranium, a key component of any nuclear warhead.
”In the recent months, Iraq has been trying to obtain these tubes for its uranium enrichment programme, and some of these shipments have been stopped,” said one US intelligence official, who declined to elaborate.
Since the tubes have no other industrial use, administration officials see the smuggling effort as fresh evidence that, contrary to Baghdad’s spirited denials, the Iraqi secret nuclear programme is alive and well.
”This is part of the record of Saddam Hussein’s continuing efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,” said one senior administration official.
The Iraqi leader has also held several secret meetings in recent months with the country’s top nuclear scientists, in what is seen as attempt to personally monitor Baghdad’s resurgent nuclear programme, the officials said.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has refused to comment on the evidence, which was first reported by The New York Times on its website earlier in the day.
But the senior administration official indicated that
”additional information will come to light” in coming days, as the debate over President George Bush’s goal of seeking regime change in Iraq gathers momentum.
The nuclear threat from Iraq was the focus of a meeting earlier on Saturday between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who described the threat as ”real” and cited new unspecified activity at Iraqi nuclear sites.
The head of a UN disarmament team said on Friday that satellite images show new structures on many of the Iraqi nuclear facilities inspected in the past.
”Images supplied by commercial satellites show that buildings have been built or rebuilt on the sites which we previously inspected,” said Jacques Baute, who in the past led a number of teams to Iraq for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Baute refused to name the sites, but said they housed ”joint civil and military nuclear installations”.
Blair, for his part, told reporters that the United States and Britain will be soon releasing a dossier containing data confirming Iraqi nuclear designs.
”There continues to be ample evidence that Saddam Hussein has relentlessly continued to seek to develop weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, nuclear and the means to deliver them,” said the administration official, who had been briefed about Bush’s talks with Blair.
Bush is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly on Thursday in a speech that is being billed a key part of his campaign to rally international support for his policy toward Iraq.
UN weapons inspectors, who worked in Iraq until late 1998, have discovered two successful nuclear weapons designs, a neutron initiator, plutonium processing and triggering technology, at least 10 nuclear weapons-related facilities and three reactor programmes, according to a recent report released here by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
But many experts believe the Baghdad regime has managed to conceal significant parts of its programme.
Former top Iraqi nuclear scientist Khidhir Hamza, who defected to the West, believes Iraq now has 12 tons of uranium, 1,3 tons of low enriched uranium and will have three to five nuclear weapons by 2005, the report said. – Sapa-AFP