UN team to check remaining Iraqi nuclear materials in line with non-proliferation
The inspection, announced yesterday by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, is at the request of Iraq’s Foreign Minister and separate from UN Security Council-mandated inspections, which probed whether ousted leader Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. Those checks ceased in mid-March 2003 shortly before the war.
The inspection will not be the IAEA’s first related to the NPT since the war. Last June a seven-member team went to Baghdad to determine how much nuclear material was missing following reports of looting at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre, which had been under IAEA seal. It found that uranium compounds dispersed in the looting posed no danger from the point of view of proliferation.