UN nuke inspectors to probe 'looting'

The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) task will be to determine how much nuclear material was looted from a storage site near the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre after the war.

But the United States, as the occupying power in Iraq, has limited their mission to counting missing containers of radioactive material and repackaging spilled material. They will not measure environmental contamination or look into reports of radiation sickness among nearby residents.

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The team is barred from entering the main Tuwaitha complex and will have no access to six other nuclear sites in Iraq that were allegedly looted in the post-war chaos.

The United States only agreed to let the agency back into Iraq after repeated warnings by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei. He said a radiological and humanitarian emergency was brewing after residents allegedly emptied containers of uranium on the ground and took the barrels to use at home.

"We don't want nuclear material anywhere lying around. We want to make sure it does not fall into the wrong hands," IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters at Vienna airport.

The IAEA investigation will be confined to "Location C," the storage depot outside the Tuwaitha complex.

The IAEA team was due to arrive in Kuwait later on Wednesday and head for Iraq on Friday.

There were over 500 tons of natural uranium and 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium stored at Tuwaitha, as well as smaller amounts of highly radioactive caesium, cobalt and strontium.

Caesium 137 is a highly radioactive powder that would be especially dangerous if used in a so-called "dirty bomb." In 1987, a canister of caesium powder found in a Brazil junkyard exposed 249 people to radiation, killing four.

The New York Times meanwhile reported yesterday that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is reviewing an important prewar intelligence report that concluded Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons.

The newspaper also reported that CIA investigators planned to ask the Defence Department about the role of its special intelligence unit in the development of intelligence on Iraq's weapons program.

The review, which comes amid international criticism of the United States and Britain for failing to uncover "smoking gun" proof of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program, was described to the Times by unnamed intelligence officials.

The assertion by the United States and Britain that Iraq possessed such weapons was a prime justification of the war.