CAIRO, April 19 (IslamOnline.net) – Parts of Iraq’s neutralized nuclear reactor have been resettled somewhere in the far-reaching country, an Iraqi scientist told IslamOnline.net Sunday, April 18.
“This can help the United States find a way out of the current limbo of failing to come across a sniff of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction,” the central rationale of the U.S.-led war one year ago, said the source, who asked not to be named.
Material and equipment from the facility, some 40 kilometers from Baghdad, have also disappeared and been looted under the watchful eye of the U.S.-led occupation troops, well-placed sources here told IOL.
Backed by U.S. warplanes, gunmen disembarked frequently from unidentified jets in the location of the Osirak reactor, looting some of its material, the sources at the Iraqi Atomic Agency (IAA) said.
‘None Of Your Business’
They noted that some IAA scientists reported the incident to the U.S.-led occupation authorities, asking for a protection to the facility and its depots.
The request fell on deaf ears as a U.S. Let. Gen. told the scientists “it is none of your business”, according to the source.
“They [the gunmen] were instructed by someone from his KIA and tampering with the reactor under U.S. protection,” another Iraqi scientist, who requested anonymity, told IOL.
“I myself happened on some non-registered materials in the reactor.” he added. “We complained umpteen times to the U.S. occupation troops, who eventually denied us access to the facility.”
An Iraqi translator working for the occupation troops confirmed the incident, claiming that the gunmen were Israelis.
He asserted that they dismantled parts of the Russian-made reactor, which was struck by Israeli warplanes in 1981 in a preemptive strike to undermine Iraq’s nuclear capabilities.
The translator added that the parts were rushed to unknown destinations in armored vehicles.
On Friday, April 16, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Mohammed ElBardei said he was concerned about the disappearance of nuclear material from the occupied country.
Baradei said in a letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on the findings, which were based on satellite images.
The U.N. Security Council was also kept posted on the situation in another letter from ElBaradei.
According to the letter, satellite imagery shows “extensive removal of equipment and in some instances, removal of entire buildings”. in Iraq.
“Large quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq,” it added.
“It is not clear whether the removal of these items has been the result of looting activities in the aftermath of the recent war in Iraq or as part of systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of their locations,” ElBaradei said in his letter.
The IAEA chief told the Security Council March 7 that documents allegedly proving that Iraq was seeking to procure uranium from Niger were forgeries.
David Kay, the head of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group which has been searching Iraq for alleged WMD, had recently resigned his post over failure to find any truce of such weapons.
