U.N. Nuclear Experts Back in Iraq

After a bitter standoff with the Bush administration, U.N. nuclear experts will return to Iraq today for the first time since the war in a long-delayed effort to determine how much nuclear waste and radioactive material were stolen by looters.

The contents of dozens of barrels of low-grade uranium and other hazardous material are believed to be missing. U.S. and U.N. officials have expressed sharp concern that terrorist groups could use some of the material to build crude “dirty bombs” that use conventional explosives to spread radioactive dust and debris.

The visit comes two months after Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, sent the first of three urgent requests to Washington. He urged the Bush administration to let IAEA safety experts return immediately to confront what he called a “possible radiological emergency.”

Bush administration relations with the IAEA were badly frayed earlier this year after ElBaradei told the United Nations Security Council that Iraq had no ongoing nuclear weapons program. That directly contradicted White House claims and undercut international support for the war.

Under pressure from the international arms-control community, the administration responded to ElBaradei on May 20. But it set strict conditions for the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to return.

The U.S. has limited the size of the IAEA team and the duration of the visit, and it has restricted the team to visiting only the nuclear storage site here.

The seven-member team thus is barred from visiting six other badly looted Iraqi nuclear facilities that were monitored by the U.N. agency for more than a decade, U.S. and IAEA officials said.

U.S. authorities also initially said the team would be required to sleep in tents at Tuwaitha. That order was later reversed, however, and its members will stay at a hotel in Baghdad, about an hour’s drive north.

The IAEA returns amid a growing political furor in Washington about White House claims before the war that Saddam Hussein’s government had secretly built illegal weapons. None has been found so far.

The Tuwaitha storage site warehoused thousands of 55- gallon drums containing nuclear waste, low-enriched uranium, radioactive sources such as cobalt-60 and cesium-137, and about 500 tons of natural uranium ore. The IAEA built the depot after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to contain material recovered during investigations of Hussein’s program to build a nuclear bomb. IAEA teams regularly monitored the sealed barrels until shortly before the latest war began in March.

“We are very anxious to get control [of radioactive sources and nuclear waste] because of concerns that this material could be used for dirty bombs,” Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview from the agency’s headquarters in Vienna.

Experts also warned that another nation could conceivably enhance low-enriched uranium from Tuwaitha to help create fuel for nuclear weapons.

“Their job will be to do an inventory to see what’s missing and, if possible, to re-collect and reseal the material,” Fleming said of the incoming team of experts in radiation safety and nuclear security.

ElBaradei first asked the Bush administration April 10 for permission to return to Iraq after a Los Angeles Times report of extensive looting at Tuwaitha.

Asked at a news conference Wednesday in Baghdad about the delay, Army Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, said time was needed “to make sure the team has the support they need.” He added, “We do have the site secured.”

The Tuwaitha storage facility, a walled compound of three flat-topped warehouses and offices, was not bombed in the war. But area residents say Iraqi guards fled after airstrikes hit nearby military camps. And U.S. Marines who arrived in early April inadvertently aided the looters by cutting heavy locks on steel doors to see what was inside.

“They went inside and didn’t know what it was,” said Dr. Husham Abdel Mulik, an Iraqi nuclear inspector who worked with the IAEA in the past. “I told them it is a nuclear storage facility and they must take care of it. After that time, they set up a checkpoint.”

But scavengers had free rein even after the U.S. troops arrived, local residents said.

“People could jump the wall and go inside while the Americans were watching,” said Farid Azawi, 53, a resident of Al Wardiya village, about 200 yards from the site. “They watch and do nothing.”

The looters, who smashed windows and doors to break into the buildings, ransacked offices and took technical documents and sensitive equipment. They also emptied or made off with scores of warehoused drums. The sacking was so severe that U.S. nuclear safety teams have been unable to determine what is missing.

“Everybody comes and takes the barrels,” Azawi said. “They empty them and use them to store water for their homes.”

U.S. troops have confiscated or paid $3 each to buy back at least 70 missing -- but empty -- barrels in recent weeks. They also poured concrete to cover material dumped in a farmer’s field. At least one girl was hospitalized after she became sick from apparent radiation exposure.

U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division troops now guard the compound. They erected heavy concrete walls topped with razor wire last week, installed new steel gates and have bricked up broken doors and windows.

Washington’s dispute with the IAEA stems, in part, from a core conflict.

The IAEA says it has the right to visit Iraq under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which the U.S. has signed, and that only the U.N. Security Council can decide if nuclear weapons inspectors should return. The Bush administration argues that, as the occupying power in Iraq, the United States is responsible for nuclear safety.

But a more poisonous atmosphere lies behind the scenes.

White House officials were furious when ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council that IAEA inspectors had found no evidence that Hussein had revived his nuclear arms programs.

He said all of Iraq’s nuclear weapons facilities and programs had been dismantled or destroyed by 1998.

ElBaradei’s assertion contradicted charges by Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials, who repeatedly warned before the war that the Baghdad government was still secretly working to build nuclear weapons.