-Caveat Lector-
Iraq's Nuclear Program - Iraq may already have a nuclear bomb
IRAQ NEWS, SUNDAY JULY 1, 2001
"Laurie Mylroie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Earlier reports from "Iraq News" covered the talk which Khidhir
Hamza, a leading scientist in Iraq's nuclear program, gave at the
American Enterprise Institute Jun 20. Hamza cautioned that Iraq may
already have a nuclear bomb, if it has managed to obtain fissile
material from another country. "Iraq News" would like to underscore
this point, as it is the dominant opinion among the experts, but there
seems to be a general state of denial regarding the immediacy of the
problem.
On Jun 14-15, the Institute for Science and International Security
(http://www.isis-online.org ) held a conference on Iraq's nuclear
program. The dominant view at the conference was:
It has been 2 1/2 years since weapons inspectors were in Iraq. Given
the advanced stage of Iraq's nuclear program, that is a very long time.
The chokepoint in Iraq's program was the fissile material, but if Iraq
has acquired it abroad, no assurances can be given that Iraq has not
produced a nuclear bomb.
Iraq is a big country, roughly the size of California, and the
weapons inspectors were a small group. Iraq has some 3,000 kilometers
of border, and it is hard to stop smuggling.
Bob Gallucci, UNSCOM's first deputy chairman, now Dean of Georgetown
U's School of Foreign Service, spoke similarly Jun 19 at Carnegie's
non-proliferation conference. Gallucci said the key question regarding
Iraq's nuclear program was the potential availability in the black
market of fissile material from the states of the former Soviet Union.
The US could not have high confidence any longer that Iraq was a
non-nuclear state.
Yet somehow this is not being absorbed. At Khidhir Hamza's talk, a
reporter responded to his statement that Iraq could have a nuclear bomb,
by asking when Iraq could obtain a delivery system. Yet Iraq has it now.
Baghdad retains some number of SCUD missiles, which it never turned over
to UNSCOM, as was learned after Hussein Kamil defected in Aug 95.
Similarly, Gerald Steinberg, of Bar-Ilan U., wrote in the "Jerusalem
Letter," Jul 1, that Iraq could have nuclear weapons within a year. That
is optimistic. This is not a future danger; it is a present danger.
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