| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| UN nuclear black market probe goes to Dubai |
| 2004-11-16 |
| Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog took environmental samples from three sites in Dubai as part of their investigation into the nuclear black market that supplied Iran and Libya, diplomats said on Tuesday. A report on Iran's nuclear programme by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), circulated on Monday, said the agency visited and took samples at three sites in an unnamed state where Tehran said uranium enrichment machinery it bought on the black market had been stored in the mid 1990s. If the samples show that particles of enriched uranium found at sites in Iran were on the equipment before Iran bought it, it would undermine U.S. allegations -- denied by Iran -- that Tehran had been purifying uranium for use in nuclear arms. "Environmental samples have been taken from the warehouses and some of the equipment there, the analysis of which is in progress," said the IAEA report, obtained by Reuters. A Western diplomat who follows the IAEA in Vienna told Reuters: "These samples were taken in Dubai." A second diplomat close to the IAEA confirmed this. The IAEA has said that Dubai, a member of the United Arab Emirates, was the headquarters of the nuclear black market run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced scientist famous throughout Pakistan as the father of its atomic weapons programme. The IAEA has been investigating Khan's network, whose tentacles touched nearly 30 countries in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, since last year, when the agency discovered that the Iranians had acquired enrichment centrifuges identical to ones Pakistan is known to have used. Tests of the samples for traces of nuclear material will help the IAEA decide whether Tehran's explanation of particles of high and low enriched uranium found at Iranian sites is credible. The discovery of the particles last year fuelled U.S. allegations that Tehran had been secretly purifying uranium for use in nuclear weapons. Iran denied this and insisted its nuclear programme is peaceful. Tehran says the traces came from contaminated second-hand centrifuge parts imported through the Khan network and shipped from Pakistan via Dubai. The IAEA says this explanation is partly credible but has been unable to verify it. Referring to Pakistan as "the State", the IAEA says in its report that it does not think all the uranium traces are Pakistani. Diplomats close to the IAEA said they could have come from another state or from secret enrichment done inside Iran. The Khan network is also known to have supplied centrifuge technology to Libya, which abandoned its nuclear weapons programme in December 2003, and North Korea, which is believed already to possess nuclear weapons. Centrifuges, spinning at supersonic speeds, enrich uranium for use as fuel in power plants or nuclear weapons. Diplomats in Vienna say the IAEA could probably tell whether the enriched uranium traces found in Iran came from Pakistan if the Pakistani authorities would let it take samples there. Islamabad has refused to let inspectors take samples in Pakistan, diplomats close to the IAEA say. But the IAEA report said some kind of compromise agreement "can be expected shortly". |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 Dubai = Russian Mafiya Central. Preferred money-laundering destination, crossroads between former Soviet Union and the islamic world. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-11-16 8:25:08 PM |