- TORONTO (Reuters) - A former
high-level Iraqi nuclear scientist, now living in Canada, said on Monday
there is no way Iraq could possess nuclear weapons and the United States
is exaggerating the potential threat for its own purposes.
-
-
- Dr. Imad Khadduri, who joined the Iraqi nuclear program
in 1968 and was part of a team trying to develop a nuclear bomb in the
1980s, said Iraq's weapons program fell into shambles after the Gulf War
and could not possibly have been resurrected.
-
-
- "All we had after the war from that nuclear power
program were ruins, memoirs, and reports of what we had done...on the nuclear
weapon side I am more than definitely sure nothing has been done,"
he told Reuters in an interview.
-
-
- "For (U.S. President George W.) Bush to continue
brandishing this image of a superhuman Iraqi nuclear power program is a
great fallacious misinformation."
-
- Secretary of State Colin Powell is to deliver "compelling"
proof to the U.N. Security Council this week that Iraq is hiding weapons
of mass destruction from U.N. inspectors who have been combing the country
for banned biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
-
-
- The former nuclear scientist, who has spoken in the past
to U.N. weapons inspectors, said he decided to speak out publicly after
the chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix sharply criticized Iraq last month
for not doing enough to comply with inspections.
-
-
- But Khadduri, who left the country in 1998, said while
he cannot speak on possible biological or chemical programs, he believes
the scientific expertise and resources needed to produce nuclear weapons
have been out of Iraq's reach for more than a decade. He said this was
due to the combined effect of the Gulf War, economic sanctions and the
work of earlier U.N. inspection teams.
-
-
- "To re-initiate such a program, it is not a simple
project, it's a huge project. There is no management to lead this rejuvenation.
The highly qualified management team has simply hibernated," he said.
-
- "Can we hide something as huge an enterprise as
a nuclear power program? Look at the establishments deployed in North Korea...it's
an impossibility."
-
-
- The soft-spoken scientist, who now teaches computer science
at a Toronto college, said he was not speaking out under any pressure from
his home country. Rather, he felt compelled to correct what he says is
"misinformation" being put forward about Iraq's nuclear program
as the United States amasses and troops and armor in the region.
-
-
- Khadduri began work on the program after earning a masters
degree in physics from the University of Michigan. He later completed a
doctorate in nuclear reactor technology from University of Birmingham in
Britain.
-
-
- At first, the program focused mainly on the use of nuclear
energy for power generation. Khadduri said that changed in 1981 after Israeli
jets destroyed the country's Osirak nuclear reactor.
-
- At that point, he said the program shifted to focus on
producing nuclear weapons. At one point Saddam Hussein put his son-in-law
Hussein Kamel in charge in order to improve results.
-
-
- Khadduri said he worked in the mid-level management of
the program and had an intimate knowledge of its operation. His work included
procuring the technical information needed to build a bomb, as well as
maintaining records and reports on its progress.
-
-
- He said the program gleaned much of its information from
research on the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bombs dropped
on Japan. In a sense he says, the Iraqi scientists were trying to "reinvent
the wheel".
-
-
- But he said the program never got more than "10
or 20 percent" of the way to creating a working nuclear weapon because
Iraq could never obtain enough fissionable material.
-
-
- Khadduri said that after the Gulf War the program was
thrown into disarray. He and many of the other key scientists were transferred
to work on reconstruction of power stations and oil refineries.
-
-
- Other scientists involved in the program retired or emigrated.
He said those that remain have seen their expertise atrophy.
-
- He and other Iraqi scientists were briefly jailed by
Hussein Kamel after the Gulf War when U.N. weapons inspectors found a cache
of technical documents and the scientists were suspected of leaking the
location.
-
- Khadduri stayed involved with the Iraqi nuclear program
until the late 1990s, contributing to one of the country's last major reports
to U.N. inspectors. He later went to work for two U.N. agencies in Iraq,
allowing him to earn the money needed to get to Canada.
-
- The scientist said he decided to emigrate, which he did
without permission, because he had always planned for his three children
to be educated abroad.
-
-
- Copyright © 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited
without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable
for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance
thereon.
- Copyright © 2003 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
|
