IRAQ: Nearly 380 tonnes of explosives are missing from a site near Baghdad which was part of Saddam Hussein's dismantled atom bomb programme but was never secured by the US military.
The head of the IAEA, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei, will immediately report the matter to the UN Security Council, a spokeswoman said yesterday. The missing explosives could be used to detonate a nuclear weapon or in conventional weapons.
The New York Times, which broke the story yesterday, said US weapons experts feared the explosives could be used in bombing attacks against US or Iraqi forces, which have come under increasing fire ahead of Iraq's elections due in January. The IAEA has been barred from most of Iraq since the war and has watched from afar as its former nuclear sites have been stripped by looters.
Vienna diplomats said the agency had cautioned the United States about the danger of the explosives before the war and after the invasion it specifically told US officials about the need to keep the them secured.
US presidential challenger Senator John Kerry accused President Bush of a massive blunder in failing to secure the explosives.
The US ambassador to the UN, Mr John Danforth, said the Bush administration was investigating the matter.The IAEA spokeswoman said Dr ElBaradei informed Washington of the seriousness of the matter on October 15th after learning about the disappearance on October 10th.
One substance found in large quantities at the Al Qaqaa facility was the explosive HMX, which the IAEA said had "a potential use in a nuclear explosive device as a detonator".
Iraq was permitted to keep some of its explosives for mining purposes after the IAEA completed its dismantling of Saddam's covert nuclear weapons programme after the 1991 Gulf war.
IAEA diplomats have warned that materials useable in nuclear weapons could easily be shipped out of Iraq and sold to countries like Iran or terrorist groups thought to be interested in acquiring nuclear weapons.
The New York Times report quoted White House and Pentagon officials, as well as at least one Iraqi minister, as acknowledging that the explosives vanished from the site shortly after the US-led invasion amid widespread looting.
A Western diplomat close to the IAEA said it was hard to understand why the US military had failed to secure the facility despite knowing how sensitive it was.