Iraq Nuclear Site Never Hit, U.S. Says

Two Iraqi nuclear sites survived the Persian Gulf War, and one of them was never attacked by allied forces because it was thought to be a general industrial plant, the Defense Department said Thursday.

One of the sites, the Atheer nuclear research facility 40 miles south of Baghdad, was attacked and “neutralized” during the war, Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams said at a briefing. Williams noted that the U.S. wartime goal was to stop Iraq from making nuclear weapons.

“It may well now be that Al Atheer was a place where there was research going on, but research during a war doesn’t give you any ability to apply combat power,” he said.

Williams said the other nuclear facility, Furat, “was not attacked because it was thought during the war to be a general industrial facility.”

Furat, closer to Baghdad, was producing centrifuges for enriching uranium to weapons grade, the New York Times reported. The newspaper said senior Pentagon officials blamed the failure to knock out the two nuclear sites during the war on allied intelligence failures and bad weather.

Williams had no more details.

Also on Thursday, Iraq denied claims by the International Atomic Energy Agency that it had tried to make lithium-6, an isotope used mainly in nuclear weapons. It said the claims were “political blackmail” to justify attacks on Iraq and prolong U.N. trade sanctions.