PERSPECTIVE ON NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION : Cat Is Creeping Out of the Bag : The U.N. inspection process itself has contributed to the Iraqi bomb program, ignoring world security interests.

“Is it OK to talk about this stuff while he’s here?” the Iraqi nuclear weaponeer inquired of an American inspector from the United Nations. “He” was another inspector, from a nation without atomic weapons. The Iraqi was proud of his accomplishments, and sensitive to the danger of allowing his knowledge to leak out.

The other inspector left the room.

In its essence, this story is true. Iraqis are worried about discussing nuclear secrets with those not authorized to learn them. Americans, British, French and Russians are concerned, but strangely enough the International Atomic Energy Agency, the organization charged with implementing nuclear safeguards, is not. The apparent position of the agency is that any international civil servant detailed to the Vienna-based organization is trustworthy.

No nuclear power believes that all of its civil servants and scientists can be trusted with nuclear weapons details; each has detailed procedures for investigating potential weaponeers. The IAEA reportedly did not even insist that the inspectors sent to Iraq have at least the equivalent of top-secret clearance granted by their own governments.

This is because the job of the IAEA has always been to encourage peaceful uses of nuclear science while verifying that no party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty diverted uranium or plutonium to a clandestine weapons program. The agency was not designed to police nuclear weapons research and does not possess the political or technical capability to do so. That, however, is its assignment in Iraq.

Incredibly, Maurizio Zifferero, the head of the IAEA action team for Iraq, recently stated in Baghdad that Iraq’s nuclear program was “at zero.” His remarks were followed rapidly by the agency’s “clarification” that its inspectors have only neutralized the part of the program the Iraqis have shown us, and that much more could still be hidden. The Iraqis bought the components to build 10,000 centrifuges to make enriched uranium for nuclear weapons; Zifferero’s inspectors have found only about one-fourth that number of machines and parts. At least one component of the Iraqi program is far from being zeroed out. The incident has demolished the IAEA’s remaining credentials for dealing with a nuclear rogue.

The inspection process itself has contributed to the Iraqi bomb program. Inspectors, some with professional experience building nuclear weapons and some with only an unclassified education, have asked Iraqi scientists pointed questions about their activities. The implications of the questions have been clear and have added to Iraq’s storehouse of knowledge about building nuclear weapons. At the very least, some believe, the ways in which inspectors have discussed Iraqi facilities have told the Iraqis that they need not have reached for a nuclear gold medal; that the bronze medal in proliferation, won with far less visible activity, could still provide them the basis for nuclear weapons once the inspectors leave.

The problem of inspection is complicated by the secrecy that surrounds nuclear weapons designs. When Russian and American inspectors stare at blueprints for components of a nuclear bomb, puzzling out the information before them--as happened in Iraq--the silent periods will exceed the discussions, because scientists from one nuclear power are not usually allowed to share weapons data with citizens of another.

There is, however, a large body of information about nuclear weapon design that must be known by each state that has mastered the art of producing a complete nuclear arsenal. Physics is the same everywhere, and the number of technically feasible designs for each class of weapon is limited. French, Chinese, American, British, and Russian inspectors should be provided with a legal class of data that they may discuss with one another--but not with citizens of other nations.

The IAEA has not requested that the special knowledge of professional nuclear weapons scientists be kept separate from that of inspectors from other nations. It has insisted that all inspectors be treated and considered as equals. On paper that is commendable, but it ignores the security interests of the world, as well as those of the nuclear powers.

The agency even turned down a request made by several of the nuclear-weapon states that the highly detailed nuclear blueprints recovered from Iraq be safeguarded by a nuclear power. Instead, those papers are kept in a locked room in Vienna, in a safe guarded by an IAEA cop. Almost anybody from anywhere can gain access to the building with little difficulty.

Iraq’s nuclear weapons program is not known with any certainty to be “at zero”; competent observers, close to the inspection process, have concerns about specific facilities. Even so, the will to pursue Iraq’s program to its innermost secrets may now have evaporated.

But there are still rocks to be turned over in Iraq, and it is time to lift them, no matter what foul matter lies beneath.