[Peace-discuss] U. S. Claim on Iraqi Nuclear Program Is Called into Question

[patton paul]

Sorry about the last post.  I had intended to send it to peace-discuss
rather than peace.  Here's a very interesting analysis of the Bush
adminstration's claim that Iraq has recently sought to purchase aluminum
tubes for use in uranium enrichment.


Published on Friday, January 24, 2003 by the Washington Post
U.S. Claim on Iraqi Nuclear Program Is Called Into Question
by Joby Warrick


When President Bush traveled to the United Nations in September to make
his case against Iraq, he brought along a rare piece of evidence for what
he called Iraq's "continued appetite" for nuclear bombs. The finding: Iraq
had tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush
said were "used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon."

Bush cited the aluminum tubes in his speech before the U.N. General
Assembly and in documents presented to U.N. leaders. Vice President Cheney
and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice both repeated the claim,
with Rice describing the tubes as "only really suited for nuclear weapons
programs."

It was by far the most prominent, detailed assertion by the White House of
recent Iraqi efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. But according to
government officials and weapons experts, the claim now appears to be
seriously in doubt.

After weeks of investigation, U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq are
increasingly confident that the aluminum tubes were never meant for
enriching uranium, according to officials familiar with the inspection
process. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.-chartered
nuclear watchdog, reported in a Jan. 8 preliminary assessment that the
tubes were "not directly suitable" for uranium enrichment but were
"consistent" with making ordinary artillery rockets -- a finding that
meshed with Iraq's official explanation for the tubes. New evidence
supporting that conclusion has been gathered in recent weeks and will be
presented to the U.N. Security Council in a report due to be released on
Monday, the officials said.

Moreover, there were clues from the beginning that should have raised
doubts about claims that the tubes were part of a secret Iraqi nuclear
weapons program, according to U.S. and international experts on uranium
enrichment. The quantity and specifications of the tubes -- narrow, silver
cylinders measuring 81 millimeters in diameter and about a meter in length
-- made them ill-suited to enrich uranium without extensive modification,
the experts said.

But they are a perfect fit for a well-documented 81mm conventional rocket
program in place for two decades. Iraq imported the same aluminum tubes
for rockets in the 1980s. The new tubes it tried to purchase actually bear
an inscription that includes the word "rocket," according to one official
who examined them.

"It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich
uranium," said one expert familiar with the investigation of Iraq's
attempted acquisition. "But you'd have to believe that Iraq deliberately
ordered the wrong stock and intended to spend a great deal of time and
money reworking each piece."

As the U.N. inspections continue, some weapons experts said the aluminum
tubes saga could undermine the credibility of claims about Iraq's arsenal.
To date, the Bush administration has declined to release photos or other
specific evidence to bolster its contention that Iraq is actively seeking
to acquire new biological, chemical and nuclear arms, and the means to
deliver them.

The U.N. inspections earlier this month turned up 16 empty chemical
warheads for short-range, 122mm rockets. But inspectors said that so far
they have found no conclusive proof of a new Iraqi effort to acquire
weapons of mass destruction in searches of facilities that had been
identified as suspicious in U.S. and British intelligence reports. U.N.
officials contend that Iraq retains biological and chemical weapons and
components it acquired before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

"If the U.S. government puts out bad information it runs a risk of
undermining the good information it possesses," said David Albright, a
former IAEA weapons inspector who has investigated Iraq's past nuclear
programs extensively. "In this case, I fear that the information was put
out there for a short-term political goal: to convince people that Saddam
Hussein is close to acquiring nuclear weapons."

The Bush administration, while acknowledging the IAEA's findings on the
aluminum tubes, has not retreated from its earlier statements. White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer reacted to the IAEA's initial report on Jan. 8 by
asserting that the case was still open.

"It should be noted," Fleischer said, "that the attempted acquisition of
such tubes is prohibited under the United Nations resolutions in any
case." U.N. sanctions restrict Iraq's ability to import "dual-use" items
that potentially could be used for weapons.

U.S. intelligence officials contend that the evidence, on balance, still
points to a secret uranium enrichment program, although there is
significant disagreement within the intelligence services. Those
supporting the nuclear theory said they were influenced by "other
intelligence" beyond the specifications of the tubes themselves, according
to one intelligence official. He did not elaborate.

IAEA officials said the investigation of the tubes officially remains
open. Earlier this week, Iraq agreed to provide inspectors with additional
data about its intended use for the tubes.

The controversy stems from a series of Iraqi attempts to purchase large
quantities -- thousands or tens of thousands -- of high-strength aluminum
tubes over the last two years. Apparently none of the attempts succeeded,
although in one instance in 2001 a shipment of more than 60,000
Chinese-made aluminum tubes made it as far as Jordan before it was
intercepted, according to officials familiar with Iraq's procurement
attempts.

Since then, the officials said, Iraq has made at least two other attempts
to acquire the tubes. The more recent attempts involved private firms
located in what was described only as a "NATO country." In all, more than
120,000 of the tubes were reportedly sought.

In each of the attempts, Iraq requested tubes made of an aluminum alloy
with precise dimensions and high tolerances for heat and stress. To
intelligence analysts, the requests had a ring of familiarity: Iraq had
imported aluminum tubes in the 1980s, although with different
specifications and much larger diameter, to build gas centrifuges --
fast-spinning machines used in enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.
Through a crash nuclear program launched in 1990, Iraq succeeded in
enriching nearly enough uranium for one bomb before its plans were
disrupted in 1991 by the start of the Gulf War, according to U.N. weapons
inspectors.

By several accounts, Iraq's recent attempts to buy aluminum tubes sparked
a rancorous debate as Bush administration officials, intelligence analysts
and government scientists argued over Iraq's intent.

"A number of people argued that the tubes could not possibly be used as
artillery rockets because the specifications were so precise. It would be
a waste of dollars," said one knowledgeable scientist.

Ultimately, the conclusion in the intelligence discussion was that Iraq
was planning to use the tubes in a nuclear program. This view was favored
by CIA analysts. However, there were dissenting arguments by enrichment
experts at the Energy Department and officials at the State Department.
What ultimately swung the argument in favor of the nuclear theory was the
observation that Iraq had attempted to purchase aluminum tubes with such
precise specifications that it made other uses seem unlikely, officials
said.

By contrast, in Britain, the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair said
in a Sept. 24 white paper that there was "no definitive intelligence" that
the tubes were destined for a nuclear program.

The tubes were made of an aluminum-zinc alloy known as 7000-series, which
is used in a wide range of industrial applications. But the dimensions and
technical features, such as metal thickness and surface coatings, made
them an unlikely choice for centrifuges, several nuclear experts said.
Iraq used a different aluminum alloy in its centrifuges in the 1980s
before switching to more advanced metals known as maraging steel and
carbon fibers, which are better suited for the task, the experts said.

Significantly, there is no evidence so far that Iraq sought other
materials required for centrifuges, such as motors, metal caps and special
magnets, U.S. and international officials said.

Bush's remarks about the aluminum tubes caused a stir at the IAEA's
headquarters in Vienna. Weapons experts at the agency had also been
monitoring Iraq's attempts to buy the aluminum but were skeptical of
arguments that the tubes had a nuclear purpose, according to one official
who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The IAEA spent seven years in the
1990s documenting and ultimately destroying all known vestiges of Iraq's
nuclear weapons program, including its gas centrifuges.

After returning to Iraq when weapons inspections resumed in November, the
IAEA made it a priority to sort out the conflicting claims, according to
officials familiar with the probe. In December, the agency spent several
days poring through files and interviewing people involved in the
attempted acquisition of the tubes -- including officials at the company
that supplied the metal and managers of the Baghdad importing firm that
apparently had been set up as a front company to acquire special parts and
materials for Iraq's Ministry of Industry. According to informed
officials, the IAEA concluded Iraq had indeed been running a secret
procurement operation, but the intended beneficiary was not Iraq's Atomic
Energy Commission; rather, it was an established army program to replace
Iraq's aging arsenal of conventional 81mm rockets, the type used in
multiple rocket launchers.

The explanation made sense for several reasons, they said. In the 1980s,
Iraq was known to have obtained a design for 81mm rockets through
reverse-engineering of munitions it had previously purchased abroad.
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqis built tens of thousands of such rockets,
using high-strength, 7000-series aluminum tubes it bought from foreign
suppliers. U.N. inspectors in the 1990s had allowed Iraq to retain a
stockpile of about 160,000 of the 81mm rockets, and an inspection of the
stockpile last month confirmed that the rockets still exist, though now
corroded after years of exposure in outdoor depots.

By all appearances, the Iraqis were "trying to buy exact replacements for
those rockets," said Albright, the former IAEA inspector.

Albright, now president of the Institute for Science and International
Security, a Washington research group, said that even a less sinister
explanation for the aluminum tubes did not suggest Iraq is entirely
innocent.

"But if Iraq does have a centrifuge program, it is well-hidden, and it is
important for us to come up with information that will help us find it,"
Albright said. "This incident discredits that effort at a time when we can
least afford it."

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.

 2003 The Washington Post Company

__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-328-4064
homepage: http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ppatton/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
__________________________________________________________________