Saddam buying nuclear components - report
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is trying to buy special equipment used to produce fuel for nuclear weapons, it was reported today.
His agents have been attempting to purchase a certain type of stainless steel tubing, uniquely used in gas centrifuges and a key component in making the material for nuclear bombs, a US administration official told the Washington Times.
Intelligence sources believe the tubing is an essential component of Baghdad’s plans to enrich radioactive uranium to the point where it could be used to manufacture a nuclear bomb, the newspaper said.
US President George Bush has called for Saddam to be overthrown, accusing him of seeking weapons of mass destruction.
"This is only one sign that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons programme," one US official told the newspaper.
And military sources said there was other evidence that Iraq is rebuilding its nuclear programme, which was to have been dismantled under UN sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf war.
Earlier this year, Turkish intelligence told the Pentagon that Iraq was believed to have at least one nuclear device.
Other intelligence reports have suggested Baghdad is also building up its chemical and biological weapons arsenal, the officials said.
Meanwhile, Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that Britain could back an attack on Iraq without a fresh United Nations mandate or a vote by MPs.
Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction had already prompted 27 UN resolutions, Mr Blair told a televised Downing Street press conference.
"We can publish more evidence later and if it is appropriate we will," he said.
"But actually there is already an enormous amount of accumulated evidence of what Iraq was up to."
Mr Blair however insisted that with no imminent prospect of action "we are all getting a bit ahead of ourselves".
According to the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Iraq has in the past sought to create enriched uranium through the use of high speed centrifuges, which spin uranium hexafluoride gas.
The spinning separates out uranium isotope gas that is highly enriched and can fuel a crude nuclear bomb, the Washington Times said.
Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project, told the newspaper that stainless steel tubing would be essential to building such gas centrifuges because the radioactive gas is extremely corrosive.
The Iraqi nuclear arms programme had planned to build a 100-centrifuge "cascade" plant, Al Furat, that would be capable of producing 55lb of highly enriched uranium per year.
That would be enough for about one-and-a-half nuclear bombs per year, according to a Wisconsin Project report on Iraq’s nuclear programme.
