Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad on Thursday discounted any possibility of South Africa having supplied uranium to Iraq.
He was reacting to a report in the British government’s dossier on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq tried to buy uranium from an African country.
The dossier, released by Prime Minister Tony Blair earlier this week, did not specify where or when the attempt to buy uranium was made, or its outcome.
At a media briefing in Parliament on Thursday, Pahad said the International Atomic Energy Agency had already rejected claims that Iraq could have obtained uranium from Africa to make nuclear weapons.
The agency had said there was no substance to the report.
Four African countries produced uranium — South Africa, Namibia, Niger and Gabon — but South Africa was the only one capable of producing the enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons.
”Our information is that we have not been requested to sell… uranium to Iraq. I can state categorically we have not,” Pahad said.
South Africa had a strict nuclear control regime, and it would be very difficult for anyone to sell such material.
There was also ”so much intelligence on Iraq” at the moment, that if there was any truth in the claims, it would most certainly have become public knowledge, Pahad said. – Sapa