Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein could produce a nuclear weapon within a few months, if he could just get his hands on enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) to fuel a warhead. That is the conclusion of a study announced today by John Chipman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Chipman said on Monday: 鈥淚raq does not possess facilities to produce fissile material in sufficient amounts for nuclear weapons鈥�. Moreover, he concludes, building such facilities would take several years and require much foreign assistance 鈥� which is hard, although not impossible, to get under the current international trade sanctions imposed on Iraq.
On the other hand, said Chipman, Iraq 鈥渃ould assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained.鈥� This contrasts with the US Central Intelligence Agency鈥檚 estimate earlier this year that that even with someone else鈥檚 HEU, it would take Iraq a year to build a bomb.
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The conclusion of the report, which will be released shortly, heightens fears about the security of nuclear material at installations throughout the former Soviet Union, where Iraq has been recruiting unemployed scientists.
Russia and the US are only now planning to move 70 kilograms of HEU, enough for three bombs of the Iraqi design, from a reactor in Uzbekistan to a safe site in Russia. There are thought to be other stockpiles at unsecured former Soviet reactors.
Uranium enrichment
But Iraq is probably also trying to produce its own HEU, says Chipman. It came close before the Gulf War in 1990, and if not for the war would have made enough for a dozen weapons by now, he calculates. The extent of the enrichment programme was only revealed by UN inspectors after the war, and has been confirmed by Khidir Hamza, former head of Iraq鈥檚 nuclear weapons programme, who defected in 1994.
Hamza has stated that Saddam is probably rebuilding his enrichment plants, either using electromagnetic isotope separation, or centrifuge methods.
Last week, officials in Washington revealed that over the past 14 months Iraq has been trying to obtain aluminium tubes of the specific size and strength needed to make rotors for gas centrifuges used in uranium enrichment.
Moreover the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said last week that satellite photographs reveal new construction at former Iraqi nuclear sites that had been destroyed.
But it would jump to no conclusions about what the building was for, stating only that 鈥渋t has had no new information on Iraq鈥檚 nuclear programme since December 1998鈥� when its inspectors left Iraq.
