Iraq Ordered to Demolish Nuclear Site

The U.N. nuclear agency ordered Iraq on Wednesday to demolish the core of a vast industrial complex that played a key role in President Saddam Hussein’s attempt to produce atomic weapons.

A senior official at the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency said that destroying the nuclear equipment and buildings at the Al Atheer complex should rob Baghdad of the ability to produce atomic warheads for some time. But he warned that nothing is certain when dealing with Iraq’s clandestine structure.

Meanwhile, a U.N. team in Iraq began wrecking missile manufacturing equipment that Baghdad had prevented a previous group from eliminating.

In several days of talks, Iraqi officials had argued that Al Atheer was devoted solely to civilian purposes.

There was no immediate reaction from Iraq on the U.N. agency’s order.

Maurizio Zifferero, the senior nuclear agency official, said Al Atheer “was meant to be a very important tool for the development of a weapon.”

The order was the latest step by the United Nations to get tough with Baghdad and insist that it meet the terms of the Gulf War cease-fire by destroying chemical weapons, long-range missiles and nuclear facilities.

The U.N. missile team went to Baghdad on Saturday after Iraq gave in to warnings from the U.N. Security Council and dropped its attempt to block destruction of the missile equipment.

The team also is checking Iraq’s claims to have destroyed many long-range Scud missiles last June.

Al Atheer, 20 miles southwest of Baghdad, is a complex of about 100 buildings that survived the Gulf War virtually intact.

Zifferero, who led several of the 10 U.N. nuclear inspection teams sent to Iraq since the war, said the destruction ordered for Al Atheer would eliminate buildings and equipment “representing investments in the order of several hundred million dollars.”

At U.N. headquarters in New York, a nuclear agency official said that about a dozen buildings would have to be destroyed.