- While Libya is praised for being totally cooperative in the UN's atomic agency's (IAEA) investigations into its past nuclear programmes, new and disturbing findings make the agency insist on further investigations. Libya seems to have imported enriched uranium - suitable for the production of atomic bombs - from across the world.
This is the conclusion in a leaked report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which was handed over to high ranking diplomats in IAEA's headquarters in Vienna today. Diplomats spoke to the news agency Reuters on condition of anonymity.
- The report says low and high enriched uranium was found in centrifuges in Libyan nuclear facilities but there is no determination as to the source of the uranium, the Vienna diplomat was quoted saying. "As far as is known, Libya has not enriched any uranium itself so a similar explanation may be feasible," he added.
These traces of enriched uranium are put in connection with uranium produced in several countries. The IAEA has indications that the atomic bomb ingredients had been imported from Pakistan and North Korea. The centrifuge is believed to have been bought on the Pakistani black market. There were also links to individuals and companies in South Africa, the ex-Soviet Union, Dubai and Japan.
Further, Libya was said to have bought drawings on how to design nuclear warheads in 2001-02. IAEA holds that the origin of these drawings is Chinese, but that also these had been obtained on the black market.
The UN atomic agency was reported to be highly alarmed by the findings of Libya's past nuclear programmes, which seemed to aim at constructing atomic bombs, but also by the evidence of a larger than expected black uranium and nuclear technology market. IAEA thus in its secret report announces further investigations into Libya's past atomic programme.
IAEA however does not seem to have any doubts that Libya stalled its nuclear programme years ago and that the intents of constructing nuclear weapons thus have been definitively stopped. In fact, the unreleased report indicates that although Libya had acquired the technology and ingredients for producing nuclear weapons, a production programme had never started and there existed no production site.
Libya is further being praised for its willingness to cooperate with the UN agency and its newfound transparency. All this controversial information has been found by IAEA inspectors investigating freely in Libya. The new finding may however indicate that Libyan authorities did not fully report on the country's nuclear programme to IAEA, as they were obliged to.
The UN Security Council only one month ago welcomed Libya's decision to cooperate with the IAEA and abandon its programmes to develop weapons of mass destruction, along with the means to deliver them. This decision, made in January his year, has opened diplomatic doors for the previously isolated regime in Tripoli all over the world.
Since then, IAEA and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have headed in depth investigations on Libya's weapons of mass destruction programmes. IAEA and OPCW have identified the country's past programmes, verified their termination and destructed materials that can be used for the production of such weapons.
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