Steve Quayle News Alerts

September 25, 2002
By Michael Evans, Michael Dynes, Catherine Philp, Richard Beeston and Alice Lagnado

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S agents have been secretly shopping for uranium in the 13 African countries that possess it as a natural resource.

The government dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction makes only a passing reference to the African quest, referring to recent attempts to acquire “significant quantities of uranium from Africa”.

But evidence supplied to the Cabinet Office’s Joint Intelligence Committee showed that Iraqi procurement agents had visited many African countries but had failed in their attempts to buy uranium.

“If Iraq had succeeded in buying uranium from Africa, the dossier would have said so,” one Whitehall source said.

The fear is that Saddam is secretly trying to import natural uranium to Iraq where it could be enriched to form the core of a nuclear weapon.

Four African countries — South Africa, Gabon, Niger and Namibia — account for 20 per cent of the world’s supply of uranium, which is regulated by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. The other African countries that have uranium are Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Somalia and Zambia, although there are no mining projects in many of them.

There were signs that the Iraqis concentrated on the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is a black market in uranium. Large uranium deposits there have not been mined for some years. The largest mine is at Mbuji Mayi, from where the uranium used in the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was extracted. The mine, in an area controlled by Zimbabwean troops, is in disrepair.

The dossier reveals that for its secret nuclear project Iraq has, since 1998, tried to buy a range of equipment for converting uranium into bomb-grade quality. Equipment included “vacuum pumps which could be used to create and maintain pressures in a gas centrifuge cascade needed to enrich uranium (and) an entire magnet production line of the correct specification for use in the motors and top bearings of gas centrifuges”.

Other nuclear-related equipment on the list included “a large filament winding machine for manufacturing carbon-fibre gas centrifuge rotors”. Since 1998 Iraq had also tried to acquire anhydrous hydrogen fluoride and fluorine gas, “commonly used in the petrochemical industry . . . but it is also used in the process of converting uranium into uranium hexafluoride for use in gas centrifuge cascades”.

The dossier says that Iraq had also often tried covertly to buy “a very large quantity (60,000 or more) of specialised aluminium tubes (which) are subject to international export controls”. The tubes have a potential application in building gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

Missile components have also been on the list. “Iraqi procurement agents and front companies in third countries are seeking illicitly to acquire propellant chemicals for Iraq’s ballistic missiles,” the dossier says. This includes “production-level quantities of near-complete sets of solid propellant rocket motor ingredients”.

An Indian chemical engineering company, NEC Engineers Private Ltd, is named as having provided a key ingredient for solid propellant rocket motors. The Delhi-based company is under investigation by Indian and American agencies over shipments to Iraq between 1998 and last year. Rajiv Dhir, the general manager, was arrested and charged in June with shipping banned materials to Iraq through middlemen in Dubai and Jordan. He is in jail awaiting trial.

Despite the United Nations arms embargo against Iraq, in force since 1990, Baghdad has bypassed the ban by illegally exporting oil and using the money to import military components for its weapons of mass destruction programme and conventional forces.

“The steady increase in the past three years in the availability of funds will enable Saddam to progress the programmes faster,” the dossier said. It claimed that this year Baghdad would get about £2 billion in revenue from smuggled oil. Oil is smuggled mainly through Syria, which is also suspected as the main conduit for the illegal import of military equipment.

Yesterday Ukraine became the latest country accused of illegal arms-smuggling. Washington is reported to have suspended aid to Ukraine after intelligence reports that Kolchuga, a complex anti-aircraft radar system, had been smuggled into Baghdad and could threaten US and British warplanes patrolling no-fly zones over Iraq.

Despite denials from Kiev, the allegations are based in part on 1,000 hours of recorded telephone conversations, which include details of the arms deal being discussed with President Kuchma.

Belarus, too, has been implicated in the sale of arms to Iraq and training Iraqi troops to use the S300 anti-aircraft missile. This year Steven Pifer, a senior US diplomat, told Belarus that it was putting the lives of British and American pilots in danger.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3463-426265,00.html