VIENNA/ BAGHDAD, 6 May 2003 — The head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has asked the United States to let him send a team to investigate reported looting at a nuclear site in Iraq, an IAEA spokesman said yesterday.

IAEA Director General Mohamed El-Baradei made the request in a letter to the US government on April 30, spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told AFP.

He said El-Baradei had urged Washington “to allow the IAEA to send a mission to Al-Tuwaitha (south of Baghdad) to investigate the disturbing reports of looting at the nuclear site”.

“We don’t consider it necessarily a problem of nuclear proliferation but it could be a problem of health and safety and environmental contamination,” Gwozdecky said. The IAEA had not yet received an answer from Washington, he added.

Another IAEA spokesperson Melissa Fleming said the inspections would be “different than the UN mandate” to find weapons of mass destruction as it would be a “safety and security mission.” She said the IAEA would be able to send inspectors “right away” if given the green light to do so.

The Washington Post newspaper had reported Sunday that a Pentagon team sent to examine a radioactive waste dump in Iraq found it so heavily looted they could not tell whether dangerous materials had been taken.

Meanwhile, as the United States tries to speed up the rebuilding of Iraq, it is finding it needs to work with many members of the Baath Party that Saddam Hussein marshaled to keep the country under strict control. US officials have blocked some senior Baathists from returning to their jobs but the rebuilding effort is dependent on junior members in a country where it was impossible to hold important posts without pledging party allegiance.

At Iraq’s vital oil industry, the US-led coalition sent home the Baathist deputy minister but his opposite number at the industry ministry was kept in place.

The new US-appointed chief of the Oil Ministry, Thamir Ghadhban, spent three months in jail in the early eighties for criticizing Baghdad’s handling of the industry, now the only guaranteed source of revenue to reconstruct the nation. He replaced Mazen Jamaa, the deputy minister and a Baath Party official who has been told to stay at home.

In the Industry Ministry, which accounts for some 20 percent of GDP in Iraq’s state-dominated economy, Baathist deputy minister Ahmed Al-Gailini was appointed by the coalition to supervise the management committee. His deputy, Muhannad Ala-Aldin, is also a Baathist.