New Search for Iraqi Nuclear Equipment

U.N. nuclear inspectors have returned to Iraq after receiving information that German manufacturers sold Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s scientists several thousand gas centrifuges designed to enrich uranium for atomic bombs.

U.N. sources said Monday that export data about the centrifuges was provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency by the German government, prompting the new search mission.

After the inspectors entered Iraq on Saturday, they were told by Iraqi officials that the centrifuges, designed to be linked together in an assembly line called a cascade, were destroyed during the Persian Gulf War.

The inspectors viewed this claim with skepticism. Iraqi officials promised to show them samples of the wrecked centrifuges today.

Previous inspection teams, often operating in a hostile environment, have discovered that Iraq was engaged in a clandestine, large-scale effort to make nuclear arms.

In a dramatic confrontation in September, 44 U.N. nuclear inspectors were held by troops in the parking lot of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission in Baghdad for two days after they seized documents pertaining to Iraq’s weapons development program. They were eventually released and left the country with extensive data, including personnel records of Iraqi atomic scientists.

Under the terms ending the Persian Gulf War, a special commission was appointed by the Security Council to supervise the removal and dismantling of all of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

The commission has operated with extensive intelligence provided by various governments about the sites of chemical and nuclear facilities in Iraq.

U.N. inspectors have found that Hussein, in the war’s wake, sought to hide materials used to enrich uranium and vastly underestimated in documents provided to the Security Council the scope of Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program.

The gas centrifuge enrichment process is just one method that Iraq was using in its effort to produce weapons-grade uranium. U.N. inspectors found that Iraq was also trying to produce such uranium through magnetic isotope separation, a relatively old fashioned technique. American scientists experimented with this method during the World War II development of the atomic bomb but abandoned it for more modern technology.

In July, Iraqi officials turned over to U.N. inspectors data indicating that promising results had been achieved in gas centrifuge technology research. The inspectors said, however, that the data showed Iraq was dependent on foreign suppliers for key components of the program.