BAGHDAD, 13 October 2004 — If UN nuclear inspectors want to return to Iraq to check for missing equipment and materials, they are welcome, a government minister said yesterday.
Science and Technology Minister Rashad Omar was responding to concerns raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the “apparent systematic dismantlement” of the physical remnants of Saddam Hussein’s once-vigorous nuclear program.
The IAEA reported Monday that neither Baghdad nor Washington appeared to have noticed the disappearance of nuclear equipment and materials once closely monitored by the agency.
“The locations that belong to the Science and Technology Ministry are secure and under our control,” Omar said.
He said nothing had gone missing since a looting spree after last year’s US-led invasion, which the United States and Britain said was to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Both countries now admit Saddam had no banned weapons.
Omar said Tuwaitha, a vast compound south of Baghdad that included Iraq’s main nuclear facility, was being turned into a science park. “The IAEA came back one month ago, they inspected the plant and others and didn’t say anything.
“We are transparent. We are happy for the IAEA or any other organization to come and inspect,” he said, adding that he had not seen the agency’s report to the Security Council.
The IAEA report, released three weeks ahead of the US presidential election, could fuel criticism of the Iraq policies of the Bush administration, already under fire for its handling of an insurgency that has so far proved impossible to crush.
On the military front, a Monday night US airstrike on the rebel-held city of Fallujah targeted a restaurant which the military said was a meeting place for followers of America’s top enemy in Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
The latest raid coincided with efforts to restore state authority in Fallujah and elsewhere before January elections. Witnesses said bombs flattened the popular Haji Hussein kebab house on Fallujah’s main street, killing two guards and reducing it to a pile of crushed concrete and twisted metal.
The US military said it was a “precision strike” on a location where Zarqawi militants met to plot attacks.
“Zarqawi does not come here. Where is Zarqawi? We have not seen Zarqawi,” yelled one Fallujah resident after the US raid.
In nearby Ramadi, Iraqi forces backed by US soldiers and Marines raided seven mosques in suspected of harboring terrorists, storing illegal weapons caches, promoting violence and encouraging insurgent recruitment, the US command said.
Meanwhile, Shiite fighters in Baghdad’s Sadr City unloaded cars full of machine guns and grenade launchers on the second day of a five-day, weapons-for-cash disarmament program.
A lasting peace in the sprawling slum would allow US and Iraqi forces to focus on the mounting insurgency in Fallujah, Ramadi and elsewhere.
