VIENNA, 21 February 2004 — Libya refined a small amount of plutonium in a secret nuclear program that extended from the 1980s until the end of 2003, the UN nuclear watchdog said yesterday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that Libya’s failures to report on its nuclear program in accordance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) shows they were “in breach of its obligation to comply with the provisions of the safeguards agreement.”

The IAEA report, to be reviewed when the agency’s board of governors meets on March 8 at it headquarters in Vienna, shows a much more advanced Libyan program than had previously been shown publicly since Libya agreed in December to dismantle its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The report said that “starting in the early 1980’s and continuing until the end of 2003, Libya imported nuclear material and conducted a wide variety of nuclear activities which it had failed to report to the agency as required under its safeguards agreement.”

These included:

— “failure to declare the import of uranium hexafluoride and its subsequent storage.”

— “failure to declare the import of other uranium compounds and their subsequent storage.”

— “failure to declare the fabrication and irradiation of uranium targets and the subsequent processing including the separation of a small amount of plutonium.”

However, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi says he has been criticized by some Arab countries for promising to dismantle weapons programs without seeking concessions from the US, such as on Israel, lawmakers who met him said.

In a two-hour meeting, Gaddafi told members of the US House Intelligence Committee that he was interested in US investment in his country, technology exchange, and having Libyans study at American universities, lawmakers said.

“We learned from him that he is committed to dismantlement. He said that he had been chided by some of his Arab neighbors for not securing more (concessions) from the US before agreeing to give up the program,” Rep. Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the panel, said.