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Books & Publications
by Iran Brief publisherKennethR.Timmerman
Click here to readbiographical information
June 29, 1993
"Iraq's Nuclear Weapons Capability and IAEA Inspections in Iraq,"Joint hearing before the Subcommittees on Europe & the MiddleEast and International Security, International Organizations andHuman Rights of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House ofRepresentatives, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, June 29,1993.
ISBN 0-16-041691-4
US Government Printing Office 71-404 CC
Washington, DC, 1993
June 21, 1993
The Honorable Tom Lantos
Chairman, Subcommittee on International Operations, InternationalOrganizations, and Human Rights, of the Committee on ForeignAffairs
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Mr. Chairman: At your direction, I have prepared this staffreport on the current status of Iraq's weapons manufacturingcapability.
While UN Council Resolution 687, which Iraq accepted, obligatedthe Baghdad government to renounce all production, stockpiling, anduse of unconventional weaponry, Iraq has rebuilt many of the weaponsplants damaged during the Allied air campaign, and has resumed theproduction of a very wide range of conventional weaponry. Iraq hasalso succeeded in in returning to service most of the tanks,artillery, and combat aircraft damaged during Desert Storm. Ifunchecked, the Gulf could face the threat of renewed Iraqi agressionduring this administration.
In addition to published reports, mainly from the Iraqi press,information for this report was gathered from personal interviewswith UN Special Commission staff in New York, with inspectors fromthe International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, and from a trip toJordan in April 1992, prior to my joining the subcommittee staff.Other interviews were conducted in Paris with French governmentofficials, with German Customs officials in Cologne, and with Germanexport authorities in Bonn and Eschborn. At no time during thepreparation of this report did the author have access to classifiedmaterial.
Some of the information on Iraqi procurement networks wasdeveloped by Jules Kroll, president of Kroll Associates, a privatefinancial investigative firm on Wall Street under contract to theKuwaiti government to identify hidden Iraqi assets abroad. Formaterial on Crescent Petroleum, I am indebted to British journalistAlan George. My colleague Dennis Kane, of the House Banking committeestaff, has generously made available some of the vast documentationhe gathered while investigating the Atlanta branch of Italy'sstate-owned Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL).
In addition, I would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistanceof Kenneth Katzman and Zachary Davis of the Congressional ResearchService.
The conclusions drawn in this report are my own, and do notnecesarily reflect the views of the Committee on Foreign Affairs orany member thereof.
Sincerely yours,
Kenneth R. Timmerman
June 29, 1993
The scope of Iraq's weapons industry was largely unknown beforethe invasion of Kuwait1. More than forty major weapons-manufacturingcomplexes were built during the 1980s, most of which are beyond thescope of the UN inspections. Many have already started operatingagain. Little or no attention has been paid to these activities byCongress or the press.
Saddam's son-in-law and cousin, Hussein Kamil al-Majid, who wasthe driving force behind the military industrialization of Iraqbefore Desert Storm, was officially rehabilitated in February 1992after a brief fall from grace. He is once again in charge of theweapons industries. His principal technical assistants, Lt. Gen. AmirHammoudi Al-Saadi (now Minister of Industry and Minerals), and Lt.Gen. Amir Rashid al-Ubaidi, continue to occupy positions ofprominence. Both are men of vision, and are extremely gifted inmanagerial skills. They are assisted by a large number of experiencedweapons designers and production technicians.
Iraq announced in January 1992 that it had already repaired andtooled up more than 200 factory buildings associated with variousmilitary production lines2. On May 4, 1992, Lt. Gen. Amir Al-Saadiannounced that "more than 50 establishments" of the former Ministryof Industry and Military Industrialization had been put back intocommission, using equipment taken out of the weapons plants andhidden before Desert Storm.3
Among those facilities that have been "thoroughly reconstructed,"accorded to inspection reports by the International Atomic EnergyAgency (IAEA) are the notorious Saad 16 ballistic missile researchand development center near Mosul, and the Al Rabiya plant inZaafarniyah, which was bombed by Allied warplanes on Jan. 17,1993.4
Iraq has already reactivated many of its black market procurementnetworks to acquire spare parts for conventionalweapons-manufacturing facilities. Once United Nations sanctions arelifted, Iraq will be free to procure most of what it needs on theopen market, to complete any gaps in technology.
Speaking before the Washington Institute for Near East Policy onMarch 24, 1993, the Chairman of the UN Special Commission for theDisarmament of Iraq (UNSCOM), Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, said he believedIraq fully intended to restore its military industrial base. "Thecapabilities are there, the supply system including banks andpayments is there. The day the oil embargo is lifted, Iraq will getall the cash and that will be a great concern... With the cash, thesuppliers, and the skills they will be able to re-establish all theweapons programes," Ekeus said. "It may grow up like mushrooms afterthe rain."5
It should be emphasized that Iraq's success in rebuilding itsmilitary-industrial base has occured despite the most rigorousinternational economic sanctions imposed on any nation since WorldWar II, and despite intrusive inspections of certain weaponsfacilities by UNSCOM and the IAEA .
Iraq's industrial purchases from the West in the 1985 through 1989ran to $14.2 billion - excluding armament. The vast majority of thisequipment went into Iraqi weapons plants and has not been found bythe UN Special Commission. It was purchased either directly by theMinistry of Industry and Military Industrialization (MIMI), which wasrun by Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamil Hasan, or byentities directly reporting to that ministry.
Production equipment found in Iraqi nuclear weapons plants hasbeen catalogued in part by the IAEA. Some has been placed under sealto prevent further use; other production tools have been slated forfuture monitoring, to ensure Iraq does not use them for its weaponsof mass destruction. Only a handful of state-of-the-art tools andapplication-specific fixtures have actually been destroyed, however.The IAEA argues that Iraq should be allowed to retain productionequipment that has a potential civilian use, since Iraq's nuclearweapons program has been fully dismantled. Chief IAEA inspector,Maurizio Zifferero, has been arguing for months that Iraq's nuclearprogram "stands at zero now."6 Few independent experts agreewith this sanguine assessment. Indeed, even IAEA director general,Hans Blix, has expressed his scepticism. In a discussion before anon-proliferation study group in Paris on May 26, 1993, Blixacknowledged that Iraq has refused to allow the IAEA to establishpermanent monitoring of its nuclear facilities.
Throughout the 1980s, West Germany was Iraq's largest supplier ofhigh-technology, with sales totalling $4.243 billion during the1985-1989 period, or four times the level of U.S. sales.
Iraqi purchases in Germany included:
• $2.4 billion worth of heavy machinery and transportationequipment
• $1.3 billion worth of manufactured goods
• $425 million worth of chemicals, and
• $114 million worth of controlling instruments.7
The vast majority of this equipment is still missing.
Iraq's extensive purchase of mainframe, mini-supercomputers andprocess control systems provides an eloquent case of the type ofsupplier information the UN Special Commission would require in orderto better identify and dismantle Iraqi unconventional weaponsprograms.
It is widely acknowledged today in scientific circles thatadvanced computers give the edge to Third World countries such asIraq, who seek to develop a nuclear device without going through thecostly and political perilous process of a nuclear test. Usinghigh-speed computers and graphics work stations, it is now possibleto simulate a nuclear blast, thus allowing design improvements to bedeveloped in a matter of months that used to require long and arduouslive testing. The UN nuclear inspectors discovered documents in Iraqwhich proved beyond a doubt that Iraq was using mainframe computersin precisely this way, and had gone through five major designupgrades of a nuclear explosive device, without undertaking a livenuclear test.
Most is known about U.S. high-tech exports to Iraq, although theUnited States was bottom on the list of Iraq's Western suppliers (asituation set to change had Iraq not invaded Kuwait). This is becauseintense pressure from the press and Congress forced the U.S.government to release detailed lists of export licenses requests forIraq. An analysis of Department of Commerce records shows that in theUnited States alone, Iraq received a total of 354 export licenses forcomputers and advanced scientific analysis equipment from May 1985through August 1990, worth a total of $113,760,714.
Of these licenses, at least 157, worth $57,792,275, were foradvanced computing systems. The most widely selling item were VAXmachines from Digital Equipment Corp. Other frequently sold itemsincluded high-speed oscilloscopes, radio-spectrum analyzers,integrated circuits, gas chromatography equipment,spectrophotometers, and a wide range of electronics manufacturing andtest equipment. All were used in Iraqi weapons plants, many in themanufacture of ballistic missiles and in nuclear weapons research anddevelopment. Typical purchasers were the Iraqi Ministry of Industry,the Ministry of Defense, and weapons establishments including Saad,Huteen, Badr, and Nassr.
Of the 157 computers, Iraq has acknowledged to possessing a singleIBM 370 mainframe - just one - located at the Thuwaitha nuclearresearch center. When the 8th UN nuclear inspection team demanded inwriting a full accounting of all mainframe computers Iraq hadpurchased for use in its nuclear weapons program, this was the fulltext of the answer they received:
"The Computer Office at Tarmiya was initially designed toaccommodate the option of a large computer (mainframe). Due to thespecial circumstances in operating individual separators [ie,calutrons for uranium enrichment], it was discovered throughexperience that the best condition would be to connect the separatorsto small dedicated computers. After achieving the steady operatingconditions for the separators, the small computers would have beenconnected through a network located in the above-mentioned office.This approach was adopted at Tarmiya. It also applies to the designof the Computer Office at Ash-Sharqat, although computers were neverintroduced at this site.
"At the Al Thuwaitha site, the large computer was an IBM-370; inaddition there were a number of personal computers (PCs) includingIBM PS/2. The approach adopted at Al Tuwaitha was to use the computercapability available in the country when needed in addition to theabove-mentioned computers." [8th IAEA inspection report, p13].
Iraq's consistent refusal to provide detailed supplier informationis one of the most daunting problems facing the UN inspection teams.Without detailed lists of equipment, suppliers, and the Iraqipurchasers, they have been hard put to penetrate the sophisticatedshell game Iraq has been playing since April 1991, when the firstinspections began, to hide its unconventional weapons capabilities.In some cases, they do not even have the necessary data to ask theIraqis the right questions.
On Feb 12, 1992, UN inspectors demanded to visit computer centersin Baghdad, where they discovered six mainframe computers made byDigital Equipment Corp, IBM, and Hewlett Packard Three machines hadbeen purchased by the Scientific Research Council (SRC), aprocurement front run by Lt. General Amer Rashid al-Ubaidi. Iraq hadnever admitted to possessing any of them.
Two of Iraq's major computer suppliers deserve to be singled out,since the scope of their deliveries puts them in a case all bythemselves.
Hewlett Packard received 57 licenses to export computer systems toIraq from the United States, worth $3,147,608, from 1984 until 1990.HP systems can be found throughout the Iraqi nuclear weapons program,at Thuwaitha, at the Saad 16 research and development center, and ata variety of heavy engineering complexes that were manufacturingparts of uranium enrichment centrifuges and calutrons. HewlettPackard maintained an office in Baghdad throughout most of the 1980s,and was a major exhibitor in the yearly Baghdad international tradefair.
The second company, International Computer Systems Ltd, wasestablished in 1986 in the UK by a Jordanian of Palestinian origin,Esam Samarra. ICS received 49 export licenses from the Department ofCommerce in the United States to sell computers to Iraq, worth$16,377,132, in addition to extensive sales it made directly fromBritain. Samarra currently owns 70% of ICS.
ICS serves as a distributor/front for Digital Equipment Corp (DEC)VAX and MiniVAX computers, which have proven their worth to weaponsdesigners the world over. It is no accident that ICS's clients wereprimarily Iraqi weapons establishments, including: Nassr, Saad 16,the Scientific Research Council, the Ministry of Industry andMilitary Industrialization, and the State Establishment for HeavyEngineering Industries (SEHEE), which was deeply involved in themanufacture of centrifuges and calutrons for uranium enrichment.
Esam Samarra subsequently set up a service company to maintain DECcomputers in Iraq, called Computer and Communication Services Company(CCS), located in Amman, Jordan. Samarra told the author of thisreport during an interview in his Amman office in April 1992 that hehad also been selling Iraq data systems made by McDonnell DouglasComputer Systems.
ICS was a major purveyor of VAX workstations to Iraq, importingequipment from the United States and from Great Britain, depending onwhere licenses could be obtained. It should be noted that during thissame period (1985-1990), DEC only applied directly for four U.S.export licenses for Iraq.
Machine-tools are the basic building blocks for any heavyindustry, and are particularly critical for the weapons industry.Because of this, machine-tool sales were carefully regulatedthroughout the 1970s and 1980s by the Coordinating Committee forMultilateral Export Controls (COCOM), an informal group of NATOpartners which attempted to prevent the sale of strategictechnologies to the Soviet Union and its allies. In many countries,machine-tool exports required an export license regardless of thedestination, because of the COCOM controls. This led Iraq to devise aparticularly ingenious method for sidestepping controls, which hassince become one of the hallmarks of Iraq's secret network.
In 1987, as plans to build an atomic weapon accelerateddramatically, the Iraqis decided to purchase a Western machine-toolmanufacturer, Matrix-Churchill, as a means of securing unlimitedsupplies of advanced machine-tools and as Iraq's principal partnerfor establishing its own machine-tool industry. Matrix Churchill waspurchased through a web of front companies controlled directly byBaghdad. The main procurement front was the London-based Technologyand Development Group (TDG), run by Safa Habobi, a former director ofthe giant Taji weapons complex.
Once it became an Iraqi company, Matrix Churchill used itssubsidiary in Solon, Ohio as a front to procure additional controlledtechnologies in the United States.
Key documents detailing the construction by Matrix Churchill andan American composite materials manufacturer, Glass InternationalIncorporated, were uncovered during the investigation of the Atlantabranch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, conducted by the HouseBanking Committee. The ceramic and glass fiber plant was used by Iraqfor the manufacture of uranium enrichment centrifuge rotors andpossibley for missile nose cones. None of this production equipmenthas been found by the UN Special Commission during its inspections inIraq, although shipping documents and plant progress reports showthat deliveries were virtually complete by July 1990. The plantappears to have functioned as a stand-alone unit at the Taji weaponscomplex in the northern suburbs of Baghdad, according to corporatesite drawings.
Similarly, little work has been done to date on the very largevolume of industrial purchases by Iraq from Japan, Yugoslavia, China,and East European countries such as Czechoslovakia. Sources inPrague, for instance, indicate that Czech state enterprises had ahand in Iraqi chemical weapon plants, while the IAEA has identified aCzech company as the source of the HMX explosives found at that wereto be used in constructing nuclear bomb cores.
A declassified U.S. Army intelligence document, obtained byprivately funded Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, revealsthat China was suspected of having built a top secret undergroundplutonium reactor in Iraq in the late 1980s, which the IAEA hassought to locate, without success. So strong were IAEA suspicionsthat Iraq had built an underground reactor that in September 1992plans were drawn up to begin long-range monitoring of Iraqiwaterways, in order to detect the minute traces of radioactivity theoperation of such a reactor would emit.
Finally, much Japanese high-tech gear has been discovered by theIAEA in Iraqi nuclear weapons establishments, although procurementinformation has remained unavailable and unsolicited by the Japanesepress.
UN inspection teams have found only a portion of the dual-usemanufacturing equipment known to have been purchased by Iraq in themid and late 1980s.
From April to June 1992, during its 11th and 12th inspection toursin Iraq, the IAEA catalogued 603 machine-tools that had been found infacilities related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program. However,approximately 2,000 machine-tools show up in Western export licensingrecords as having been sold to Iraq in the late 1980s, primarily fromthe UK, Germany and Italy. Because export controls on machine-toolswere being relaxed at the same time, and because certain governmentswere seeking to expand their machine-tool exports to Iraq bydecontrolling items that normally would have been controlled, it isimpossible to estimate how many more machine-tools were actuallydelivered to Iraq without individually validated licenses. 8
For instance, of the 603 nuclear-relevant machine tools found inIraq, IAEA records showed that 502 were not licensed by exportingauthorities. In the case of Great Britain, 49 of the 83 machine-toolsfound by the IAEA were subject to export licensing restrictions.However, British export licensing records, made available toParliament as part of its inquiry into British arms sales to Iraq,show that the Department of Trade and Industry licensed 313machine-tools to Iraq from 1987-1989 - and by all accounts, only afraction of what was actually shipped9. By the most conservativeestimate, therefore, at least 264 British tools are currentlymissing.10
In the two months preceding Operation Desert Storm, Iraq workedday and night stripping its manufacturing facilities of valuableproduction equipment, computers, records, and materials. According toa senior Jordanian official, interviewed in Amman in April 1992, thiseffort was supervised by Lt. General Amer Rashid al-Ubaidi,Undersecretary at the Ministry of Industry and MilitaryIndustrialization (MIMI). The Jordanian official was a frequentvisitor to Iraqi weapons plants, ballistic missile tests, andresearch centers in the late 1980s, in his official capacity as ascientific and technical advisor to King Hussein. He claimed thatGeneral Amer boasted to him after the war of his success.
U.S. spy satellites photographed this activity only days beforethe air war began, leading one Operations intelligence officerinterviewed subsequently to observe that the Pentagon had "solidevidence" Iraq had been stripping its weapons plants in preparationfor war11.
Underground storage sites used to hide industrial equipment werenot high-priority targets during the air war. Besides, they were sonumerous as to render a bombing campaign against them extremelycostly. After the Israeli bombing of the Osirak nuclear researchreactor in June 1981 every government building in Iraq wasconstructed on top of large underground shelters. Airbases and entirefactory complexes were buried, with exact copies constructedelsewhere to fool enemy warplanes and reconnaissance satellites(so-called "potemptkin" facilities) . This accounts in part for thedifficulties in bomb-damage assessments during the air campaign.
In mid-April 1992, following the destruction of the nuclearweapons design center at Al Atheer, Western intelligence photographedIraqi trucks hauling equipment back into known manufacturingfacilities. This signalled Iraq's conclusion that it had reached theend of the intrusive UN inspections and was free to rebuild itsweapons plants at will.
Declarations in recent months by senior Iraqi leaders have onlyhighlighted this intent. On Jan. 13, 1993, Lt. Gen. Amer Rashidboasted that Iraq had rebuilt its air defense network "better thanbefore" Desert Storm12. On Feb. 7, Lt. General Amir Hamoudi Al-Saadiannounced that Iraq had succeeded in rebuilding the war-damaged AlQaim industrial complex, which had been used to extract uranium fromphosphates ore and for the manufacture of CW precursors. Al-Saadialso hinted that Iraq had resumed production of main battle tanks. "Ithink every country is entitled to produce what it can for itslegitimate defence and Iraq is no exception," he said.13 Meanwhile,Russian ballistic missile expert Nikiti Smidovitch returned from aninspection tour to announce that Iraq had begun work on a new familyof surface to surface missiles, with a range just under 150 km.14
None of the UN Security Council resolutions concerning Iraq callsfor the dismantling or future monitoring of Iraq's conventionalweapons plants. This is a loophole that has never been examined veryclosely in open fora.
UN teams have inspected some of these plants, but only within thevery limited framework of the contractual relationship between thefacilities and Iraq's nuclear weapons complex or with the ballisticmissile or CBW programs. As one senior analyst with the UN SpecialCommission put it, "We can't be bothered with counting how many 155mm shells the Iraqis can make, as long as they do not violate theterms of [UN Security Council Resolution] 687... We have toomuch to do as it is."
In other words, Iraq is fully allowed by the terms of theceasefire to continue manufacturing conventional weapons andammunition and whatever rate it desires, even in the same plants thathave been identified for their relevance to the nuclear weaponsprogram. In theory, Iraq can even save equipment slated for disposalby the UN Special Commission by declaring that it will "only" be usedfor the manufacture of conventional weaponry. Allowable activityincludes the manufacture of artillery rockets and ballistic missileswith ranges of 150 kilometers or less. What is not allowed isresearch or production of weapons of mass destruction, defined asnuclear weapons, chemical or biolological warfare agents, orballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 kilometers.
Iraq has tried to take advantage of this loophole to prevent thedestruction of equipment used for the production of the Badr 2000(Condor II), a 1000 kilometer-range ballistic missile believed to befar more accurate than Iraq's upgraded SCUDs. (Its solid-fuel motorsalso make it easier to conceal and quicker to deploy). Starting in1985, the United States government led a major Western campaign toprevent the sale of critical manufacturing equipment to the Condor IIprogram, parts of which were being conducted jointly with Argentinaand Egypt. Before the UN inspections began in Iraq, it was widelyclaimed that halting the Condor II program was the largest singlesuccess of the Missile Technology Control Regime.
UNSCOM ballistic missile teams soon discovered not one but fourseparate facilities in different parts of Iraq that were heavilyengaged in the production of the solid-fuel Badr 2000 only daysbefore the Allied bombing of Iraq began. One of the facilities, southof Fallujah, was also manufacturing liquid-fueled al Hossein and alAbbas missiles, Iraq's improved-range SCUDs.
All four missile plants appear to have been built by German andItalian firms, although the bulk of the solid fuel technology is saidto have originated in the United States and to have reached Iraq viaFrance and Italy. 15
Nevertheless, in letters dated Nov 19, 1991 and Feb 28, 1992,Iraqi officials informed the UN Special Commission that they intendedto "modify and alter the equipment for the Badr-2000 project with aview to its reuse... [for] the manufacture of civilianexplosives [and] in the manufacture of 100 kilometer rangeAbabil missiles" - both of which were allowable activities.
In particular, the Iraqis wanted to save from destruction a seriesof solid fuel mixers, made by the Draiswerke company in Germany,installed at the Taj al-Ma'arik missile plant south of Baghdad. Theyargued that since the mixers could also be used for "allowable"activity, they should not be destroyed.
While UNSCOM rejected Iraq's reasoning in this particular case andbegan destroying Condor II manufacturing equipment in April 1992, itleft the vast majority of Iraq's "dual-use" equipment untouched.
Thirty-one machine-tools were destroyed by the UN SpecialCommission during the March and April 1992 inspections Ten of thesewere designated as missile-related, the other 21 as nuclear-related.Twenty-five other pieces of production equipment were destroyed, mostas part of Iraq's ballistic missile program (solid fuel mixers,induction furnaces, hot and cold isostatic presses, etc). Specializedjigs and mandrels were destroyed, as were calutron and centrifugeassemblies used in uranium enrichment. Isolated pieces of equipmenthave been rendered inoperational since then.
This extremely modest destruction of Iraq's unconventional weaponscapability has left major military manufacturing programs virtuallyuntouched.
The case of the Zaafarniyah industrial complex, located some 20kilometers south of Baghdad, illustrates the limits of the inspectionprocess as currently structured.
Two distinct facilities were located on the same site, both ofwhich were inspected by the IAEA because they had been producingparts for the nuclear weapons program. The Digila electronics plantwas inspected twice because it had produced electronic parts for thecalutron uranium enrichment program. The Al Rabiya heavy machiningplant (aka al Rabee) was inspected on four separate occasions - twiceby UNSCOM for missile activities, and twice by the IAEA.
Like most Iraqi weapons plants, Al Rabiya was designed andoperated as a dual-use facility, under the auspices of the Ministryof Industry and Military Industrialization. Seventy-eight machinetools at this site were catalogued by the IAEA as related to thenuclear weapons program. These included large German machines used tomake the calutron casings. Despite this known activity, the plant wasnever disabled by the IAEA, nor were these key manufacturing toolsplaced under any kind of monitoring that would have prevented theiruse in nuclear projects in the future. Inexplicably, the IAEAeventually dropped it from its list of potential inspection sites.
In January 1993, U.S. military planners concluded that Al Rabiyacontinued to operate, and that the Iraqis considered it a safe havenfor illicit activity including the production of calutrons anduranium enrichment centrifuges assemblies.
Confidential informants have told the Subcommittee staff that oneWestern government (not the U.S.) had urged the IAEA to destroy AlRabiya prior to the U.S. air strike against the site on Jan. 17,1993. Despite the plant's clear relevance to both the calutron andcentrifuge programs, however, the IAEA refused.
Three days after the strike, Saddam Hussein vowed to rebuild theplant. And on March 16, the head of Iraq's Military IndustrializationOrganization, Hussein Kamal Hasan, announced that reconstruction wasnot only complete but that the "enterprise is now operating evenbetter than before."16 In his announcement, Kamil renamed the plantthe "al-Nida State Enterprise for Manufacturing Molds, ConstructionWorks and Machines." Al-Nida is the codename for a project to buildmobile missile launchers. Indeed, al-Rabiya plant equipment wasperfectly suitable for casting large steel and aluminium assembliesfor missile launchers. The reconstruction of Al Rabiya/Al Nidaa wasdocumented during the 17th and 18th IAEA inspections.
Another example, drawn from the 18th IAEA inspection report, isthe notorious Saad 16 ballistic missile R&D plant near Mosul,built by Guildemeister and a consortium of German and Austriancompanies in the mid-1980s. By any interpretation of the UN ceasefireresolutions, this plant should have been thoroughly monitored andkept out of commission. Just the opposite has occured. According tothe 18th IAEA inspection report,
"Al Kindi (SAAD 16)... is a facility for military research anddevelopment, in particular, the pyrotechnics and propellants used inrockets. The site has been thoroughly reconstructed after severedestruction during the Gulf War. The facilities at the site havefeatures that could be useful in development of small quantities ofexplosives such as those used in a nuclear weapons developmentprogram. It has also some good quality machine shops for fabricatingnon-explosive materials, an electroplating capability and a primitivecapability for the machining of high explosives. The reconstructioneffort has proceeded since the visit in November 1992. More buildingshave been completed and additional equipment has last beeninstalled.No nuclear related activities prohibited under UNSCR 687were observed."17
As a general rule, the IAEA has been loath to destroy dual-useequipment to avoid giving the impression it is seeking to preventIraq's scientific and technological development. Rather than shutdown an entire factory, the IAEA's approach has been to targetisolated pieces of equipment spread across a number of sites. Thishas left virtually untouched the largest military manufacturing basein the Arab world.
Sometimes this has led to extreme cases. Also during the 18th IAEAinspection in early March 1993, Chief inspector Dimitri Perricoschanced upon no fewer than 242 machine-tools, many of thempotentially subject to UNSC 687 monitoring, in a single nuclearweapons facility, Al Huteen. Earlier IAEA teams had simply missedthem. 94 of these machine-machine tools were 3 and 4-axis turningmachines manufactured by Matrix Churchill.
The IAEA is unlikely to become more severe with Iraq, and indeed,can be expected to argue that Iraq should be allowed to retain itsdual-use equipment and production facilities - indeed, even nuclearfacilities. During an extended conversation in Vienna earlier thisyear, the head of the IAEA inspection team, Professor MaurizioZifferero, said he could see "no reason why Iraq should not beallowed to pursue legitimate civilian nuclear research again. I canimagine the day where they might want to rebuild the Thuwaitharesearch reactor, or build nuclear power plants." Such activity,Zifferero believed, would be "legitimate and innocuous" since theIAEA has reduced the Iraqi bomb program "to zero."18
Since Zifferero's comments were publicized in the Wall StreetJournal, he has backed away from this position in his publicstatements.
Iraq has been steadily building up the industrial infrastructurenecessary for a broad-based weapons industry since Saddam Husseintook charge of military procurements and security questions in 1974.
At that time, Saddam set up a three-man Strategic PlanningCommittee that took charge of arms purchases, military-industrialplanning, and the secret financial networks.
In the early days, Saddam's partners on the three-man committeewere his cousin, Adnan Khairallah (who went on to become DefenseMinister in the 1980s before his death in a mysterious helicoptercrash in May 1989), and Adnan Hamdani, Saddam's personal secretary.Trained as a lawyer, Hamdani was in charge of contractualnegotiations and financing, and went on to become PlanningMinister.19
Part of Hamdani's job was to slip strategic weapons projects intolarge contracts ostensibly devoted to developing Iraq's civilianmanufacturing or agricultural potential, which in turn were buried inIraq's Soviet-style Five-Year Plan. Under the heading "agriculturaldevelopment," for instance, Hamdani inscribed a little-noticed entrythat called for "the creation of six laboratories for chemical,physiological, and biological analysis." To operate the laboratories,which were devoted to biological weapons research, the Plan calledfor the training by foreign companies of 5,000 technicians. One ofthese labs was the now famous Salman Pak "baby milk" plant,identified by UNSCOM as Iraq's largest biological weaponsfacility.
Every "civilian" plant Iraq built in the late 1970s and 1980s wasalso geared for military production. Chemicals plants at Fallujah,for instance, also churned out precursors for poison gas. Heavyengineering plants in the southern suburbs of Baghdad produceduranium centrifuge parts as well as machine-tools and railroad ties.Steel plants were built so they could just as easily manufacturereinforcing bars for the construction industry as armor-plate fortanks. To fully grasp the scope of Iraq's weapons-manufacturingcapability, one must examine in detail Iraq's industrial base with aneye to dual-use. This was the case before the UNSCOM inspections, andit remains the case today.
The imbrication of military with civilian production madeprocurement of most materials an easy task throughout the 1980s.Under the guise of building a $1 billion "super-phosphates" plant atAl Qaim, for instance, Iraq also procured processing lines toseparate uranium from phosphate ore. As part of the gigantic steelcomplex at Taji, they purchased a foundry for tank barrels; or again,under the cover of electrical generating equipment they purchasedlarge steel casings which were used for the uranium enrichmentcalutrons.
While many Iraqi weapons plants were heavily destroyed duringAllied bombing raids, extraordinary efforts have been spent over thepast two years to get military production back up and running.According to Israel's top private analyst on Iraq, Amatzia Baram,"Saddam must continue his military efforts, since his whole raisond'être over the past twenty years has been to transform Iraqinto the Prussia of the Middle East. Arms manufacturing is built intohis system. Without it, Saddam will lose prestige, and perhaps losepower."20
Of the forty-seven main weapons plants listed in the Appendix,thirty-three have been cited by the IAEA for having contributed toIraq's crash effort to develop an atomic weapon, ten were engaged inchemical or biological weapons production, twelve were involved inballistic missile research, design, development, and manufacture,while twenty-four were making conventional armaments.
Much remains of this vast industrial infrastructure. As mentionedabove, most production equipment was dismantled before the Alliedbombings and was stored in underground bunkers or civilian industrialsites for the duration of the war. Over one hundred pieces ofproduction equipment from the Samarra poison gas works, for instance,were stored in the Mosul sugar factory, and discovered only byaccident by UN inspectors. It is not known how much of this equipmenthas been subjected to monitoring.
The following is a brief summary by factory of the conventionalweapons production capability still believed to exist in Iraq:
• Al Ameen: T-72 tank assembly, under Polish and Czechlicenses; machine-tool assembly line.
• Al Amil: liquid nitrogen production
• Al Muthena (Fallujah chemicals plant): HMX,.RDXexplosives.
• Al Qaqaa: aerial bombs, TNT; solid rocket propellants
• Al Rabee: precision machining
• April 7: proximity fuzes for 155 mm and clustermunitions
• Badr: aerial bombs, artillery pieces; tungsten-carbidemachine-tool bits
• Base West World: major armor retrofitting center
• Digila: computer software; assembly of process-linecontrollers for weapons plants; plastics casting
• Fao: cluster bombs; fuel-air explosives
• Huteen: explosives, TNT, propellants; potential for armoredvehicle assembly
• Mansour: defense electronics
• PC1: ethylene oxide for fuel-air explosives
• Saad 5 (Saddam Engineering Complex): 122 mm howitzers;Ababil rockets; tank optics; mortar sites
• Saad 13 (Salah al Dine): defense electronics, radars,frequency-hopping radios radios
• Saad 21: Nonferrous metal plant for ammunition cases
• Saad 24: gas masks
• Sawary: small patrol boats
• SEHEE: heavy engineering complex capable of a wide varietyof military production (artillery, vehicle parts, cannon barrels)
• Taji: wheeled APCs (East European license); armor plate;artillery pieces.21
This very broad-based capability gives Iraq the possibility notonly of refurbishing the 250 or more fighter aircraft and 2,500 mainbattle tanks that survived the war, but of expanding its militaryinventory in the very near future. Noting this development, theChairman of the UN Special Commission, Rolf Ekeus, noted earlier thisyear that Iraq "considers its obligations ended once destruction ofits weapons of mass destruction is completed, and has said it willnot accept UN monitoring of any future arms buildup."22
In a briefing for members of the House Foreign Affairssubcommittee on Europe and the Middle East on June 7, Ekeus went evenfurther.
"Iraq is systematically preserving its options in all four areasof unconventional weapons production - nuclear, ballistic missile,chemical, and biological," Ekeus said. Furthermore, there were "nosigns" that Iraq was dispersing the teams of scientists that hadworked on these weapons projects. Iraq has "jealously guarded andprotected its foreign suppliers network," and continues to refuse toaccept monitoring of its future capabilities. "So far, we have seenno element of voluntary compliance by Iraq" with the UN SecurityCouncil resolutions. "They have tried to conceal as much as theycan."
Iraq continues to operate an extensive clandestine procurementnetwork in Europe, the Middle East, and possibly in the UnitedStates. Some of the most notorious agents who helped Iraq obtainsophisticated Western technologies for its long-range ballisticmissile programs and its nuclear weapons effort are still at large.Among these:
• Safa Habobi, the President of Technology Development Group(TDG), London. TDG led the Iraqi procurement effort in Europe,serving as the front for the purchase of the machine-tool company,Matrix Churchill Ltd. British Customs inexplicably waited severalmonths after the international embargo on Iraq and Iraqi assets wasin place before raiding the TDG offices, allowing the Iraqis to cartof critical documents that might have exposed their network. Habobiwas allowed to leave Britain and return to the Middle East. OnSeptember 27, 1992 he was involved in a non-fatal car crash and wasidentified in hospital in Amman, Jordan. He is believed to have movedhis procurement operations to Tunisia.23
• Khaled Marzoumi, the former Commercial attaché atthe Iraqi Embassy in Paris in the late 1980s, now operates out of theoffices of the State Oil Marketing Organizaiton (SOMO) in Amman,Jordan, where the author briefly encountered him in April 1992. In1988-89, he was instrumental in the operation of Babil International,an Iraqi front company registered in France that was controlled bySafa Habobi of TDG and was used for procurement and financialtransactions on behalf of the Iraqi government.
• Pierre Drogoul, the father of indicted BNL-Atlanta bankerChristopher Drogoul. Until recently, the elder Drogoul worked as aconsultant for Babil International. The French government has neverclosed Babil or seized its accounts, which are held at theNeuilly-sur-Seine branch of the Union des Banques Françaiseset Arabes (UBAF). Drogoul continues to operate a trading company,Technique Materiel Commerce International (TMCI), in the Paris suburbof Garches.
• Sam Namaan, aka Saalim Naman, served as Vice President ofMatrix Churchill Corp, the U.S. branch of the British tool companythat fitted out a dozen Iraqi weapons plants in the late 1980s.Although the Solon, Ohio offices of MCC were raided by U.S. Customsagents in 1991 and Namaan was sought for questioning, he wasreportedly allowed to re-enter the United States at Detroit on Oct.10, 1992 on an immigration visa.24
• Anis Mansour Wadi, one of the original members in Europe ofthe Iraqi procurement network, established several companies inBritain and later in the United States that were used to purchaseequipment for the nuclear weapons program. One of these, BayIndustries, of Century City, California, was searched and closed downby U.S. Customs agents on March 22, 1991. However, Wadi is believedto have continued operating in the United States.
The investigative arm of German Customs, the ZKI(Zollkriminalinstitut), is currently investigating more than 150German and Iraqi-owned companies based on German territory forpossible breaches of the UN sanctions against Iraq. Among thecompanies on the "active" list, which was made available to thesubcommittee by private sources in Europe, are some of Germany'slargest industrial concerns, such as Thyssen, MAN, and Strabag BauAG.
Some companies are familiar to investigators for their role inhelping Iraq to develop its upgraded SCUD missiles, such as ABCBeaujean of Stuttensee. Others are under investigation for sellingtechnologies with a potential nuclear end-use, including calutronmagnets, and special piping for use in a centrifuge enrichment plant.This suggests that Iraq indeed intends to continue its nuclearweapons program, despite its commitment to UN Security CouncilResolution 687.
Iraq-owned fronts constitute another category of companies on theZKI case list. Among these are the Iraqi Shipping Lines in Bremen,and the German office of the Technology Development Group, known asTDG-SEG, Krefeld, which is believed to be purchasing machine-toolsand other goods in Germany using fake Jordanian end-use certificates.Equipment purchased in this manner is shipped legally to Jordan,where it is subsequently diverted to Iraq by truck.
The German subsidiary of Minolta, based in Arensberg, is underinvestigation for a potential export of a flash x-ray camera. Asimilar item was discovered by the IAEA at Iraq's Al Atheer nuclearweapons lab, where it was used to develop nuclear explosive "lenses."Minolta has strenuously denied accusations in the past of havingsupplied Iraq with dual-use equipment. The IAEA in Vienna continuesto look with great interest Iraq's suppliers of flash x-rayequipment. Another unit was obtained from IMACON in Switzerland,apparently through the intermediary of a Geneva-based tradingcompany, Bonaventure (Europe) Inc.
In Hamburg, Stinnes Interoil AG is suspected by German Customs ofhaving organized purchases of Iraqi oil, in contravention of theembargo. It is not known whether they played the role of intermediaryfor foreign sales of Iraqi oil, or whether they imported oil intoGermany itself. As in all other cases cited, no criminal proceedingshave been initiated.
Some new names appear on this latest list of German companiessuspected of embargo-busting, including Krupp Atlas, of Bremen, andmachine-tool manufacturers such as Condux Maschenbau, of Hanau, andMöller Maschinenfabrik GmbH, of Bekum. Reman Enterprises-RaoufMahdi, of Nurenburg, is suspected of having sold weapons. Companiesunder investigation for unspecified embargo breaches include:Allgemeine Nah-ost Handelsgesselshaft (Hamburg), Alloy Pipe and Metal(Rattingen), Benteller AG (Vienslacke), China Project and Investment(Hamburg), Comaco GmbH (Gellhausen), Commerce und Finance Service,Pan Trade GmbH (Bensheim), and Rotermund GmbH (Munich). None has beenindicted.25
Until recently, Jordan had served as Iraq's primary conduit to theWest. Goods were imported for use in Jordan through the port ofAqaba, and shipped up through the desert to Baghdad on trucksoperated by the Iraq-Jordan Land Transportation Company, which isowned jointly by the governments of Iraq and Jordan.
Under intense pressure from the United States, and from publicexposure of Jordan's role as a conduit for embargoed goods reachingIraq, in early 1992 King Hussein ordered a crackdown on illicitactivities, in an attempt to clear his country's name as an Iraqially. However, it took several months before key Iraqi agents wereweeded out of the Jordanian bureaucracy, where they had been signingfalse end-use and embargo-compliance certificates. Key to obtainingJordanian support was the cutoff of U.S. aid to Jordan in 1991.
Jordan has been allowed, however, to continue purchasing Iraqi oilby the UN Sanctions Committee. These purchases, estimated at 60,000to 70,000 b/d, were specifically tied to the repayment of Iraq's debtto Jordan. This debt stood at around $400 million when the initialwaver was granted in August 1990. By all estimates, even at thereduced price of $16 per barrel, Iraq's oil deliveries should havewiped out the debt by late December 1991 However, the oil deliveriesto Jordan continued on the same scale as before throughout 1992.
According to Western diplomats interviewed in Amman, this isbecause the Central Bank of Jordan had been purchasing Iraqi debtfrom commercial banks, and reclassifying it as "official" debt. Debtofficers at the Central Bank of Jordan confirmed that the Iraqigovernment debt to Jordan still stood at around $400 million in April1992, despite the oil deliveries, but refused to comment on how thishad come about.
Wall Street investigator Jules Kroll, who has been tracking Iraq'sprocurement effort in Jordan, says the Iraqi government transferred$5.2 billion in government funds to the Arab Bank in Amman just asOperation Desert Storm was ending, to establish a new tradinginfrastructure for Iraq. In addition to this, he alleges that theCentral Bank of Jordan is laundering secret Iraqi government funds inSwitzerland through commercial banks such as Jordan's Housing Bank,the Jordan Gulf Bank, and the Arab Financial Corporation. Localbankers in Amman quietly confirmed that they were financing Iraqiimports through Jordan and trading in Iraqi commercial paper, butrefused to provide details.26
Already in March 1992, two French major oil companies, CFP Total,and Elf Aquitaine, acknowledged that they were engaged in activenegotiations with the Iraqi government over future oilproduction-sharing agreements in Iraq.27 Since then, oil ministry andprivate businessmen from Russia, Italy, and Belarus have alsoattempted to renew contact.
In March 1993, the State Department formally accused Iran ofhaving violated the oil embargo on Iraq, after U.S. observationsatellites detected what was described as a "large convoy of oiltrucks" leaving Iraq for Iran. Iran denied the charge, which wasreiterated in the daily State Department briefing on March 30 byspokesman Richard Boucher.
Unconfirmed reports from Kuwaiti sources warned that commercialcontacts have intensified in recent months between major Frenchdefense exporters and Iraqi agents in Europe, in view of renewing thesupply of spare parts for Iraq's fleet of Mirage F1 fighter-bombers.The Franco-German Eurocopter consortium was also said to have beenprobing new sales. Given the public support of the UN embargo by theFrench government, however, most foreign diplomats in Paris believeit highly unlikely that the French government would approve suchsales. One report, from a French source that claimed personalknowledge, alleged that a major French defense electronics companyhad established an office in Amman, Jordan for the sole purpose ofservicing equipment sold to Iraq in the 1980s. This has not beenconfirmed.
What is certain is that the Iraqi Air Force Mirages have beenperformed training missions in recent months in an increasinglybrazen manner, notably along the borders oaf the southern exclusionzone.
Furthermore, according to Andrei Volpin, a a Russian researchfellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, some 200Russian military technicians remain in Iraq and are servicingSoviet-built equipment. Russian officials from Oboronexport, thegovernment's arms export agency, confirmed the presence of theRussian technicians in Iraq but insisted that they had been engagedon "private" contracts.28
The Office of Foreign Assets Control continues to investigate a$700 million independent oil company, Crescent Petroleum CompanyInternational, on the suspicion it may be acting on behalf of theIraqi government.
Crescent operates out of the Emirate of Sharjah and is controlledby Hamid Dhia Jaafar, the brother of Jaafar Dhia Jaafar, theacknowledged head of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program. Jaafar Jaafar currently serves as senior Undersecretary of theMinistry of Industry and Minerals, formerly known as the Ministry ofIndustry and Military Industrialization (MIMI), and is the principalinterlocutor for International Atomic Energy Agency inspection teamsinvestigating Iraq's nuclear weapons capabilities.
If Crescent has been acting on behalf of Iraq then its assetsworldwide could be seized under the terms of UN Security Councilresolutions. Crescent has a registered office at 5847 San Relipe,Suite 2150, Houston, Texas.
The allegations, which Crescent's owner of record, Hamid Jaafar,strenuously denied, revolve around the company's ties to MIMI. In1989, Crescent was appointed sole agent on MIMI's behalf to negotiatethe acquisition of technology for a large-scale aluminum smelter tobe built near Nassiriyah in southern Iraq, a project which ismentioned in the "Chairman's letter" introducing the company's1989-1990 Annual Report. In the 9th inspection report of Iraq'sclandestine nuclear facilities, IAEA inspectors note that specialaluminum parts used in Iraq's uranium enrichment centrifuges weremelted down in May or June 1991 at the Nassiriyah smelter, identifiedby the Iraqis as the "Ur Establishment" and described by the UnitedNations as "the only aluminum smelter in Iraq." Since then, the IAEAand the UN Special Commission have identified this facility to be"linked" to Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Crescent appears to have been doing business directly with thehead of Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, MIMI SeniorUndersecretary Lt. Gen. (Dr.) Amir Hamoodi Al-Saadi. In an apparentlyunrelated deal, Al-Saadi empowered Hamid Jaafar to purchase financialinterests in foreign oil refineries by using Iraqi oil as collateral.This led to an attempted purchase by Crescent of the entire Petrofinanetwork of refineries and 3,000 filling stations in the UnitedStates, and would have vastly expanded the financial assets availableto MIMI for weapons development.
While Crescent may not have been in the business of armsmanufacturing or procurement per se, it was certainly linked to theprincipal Iraqi government organization that was. Crescent hasrepeatedly denied any wrong-doing. However, in a libel suit companylawyers brought against independent journalist Alan George for havingwritten about Crescent's ties to MIMI, a London court ruled that nolibel had been commited and awarded damages to Mr George.
Former CIA Director Robert Gates put a timetable on the Iraqirearmament effort, addressing Iraq's capabilities in the areas ofnuclear technologies, chemical and biological weapons, and ballisticmissiles in testimony before the U.S. Senate Government OperationsCommittee on Jan 15, 1992.
The most immediate threat following the easing of UN sanctionswould be from Iraqi biological weapons, because of the small amountof specialized production equipment required. Iraq "could beproducing BW materials in a matter of weeks of a decision to do so,"Gates said.
Some chemical warfare agents could also be produced almostimmediately, since much of the hard-to-get production equipment wasremoved and hidden before Operation Desert Storm began. However,heavy bomb damage to Iraqi CW plants and continued monitoring by theUN Special Commission will partially retard Iraq's effort to regainthe CW capability it had previously enjoyed. Gates believed that afull CW capability would take "a year or more" for Iraq to accomplish- a very short lead time, indeed.
The CIA continues to estimate that Iraq has hidden away around 200improved SCUD missiles (al-Hossein and al-Abbas variants, with rangesof 650 and 900 km respectively) - an estimate Ekeus reiteratedrecently.29 Added to this is a suspected capability to indigeneouslyproduce liquid fuel for these missiles, making Iraq independent ofoutside sources or technology. 30
Iraq's nuclear program took the hardest hit, Gates claimed. Evenhere, however, the CIA estimates the time Iraq would need toreconstitute its nuclear weapons program at "a few, rather than many,years."
Gates concluded: "In our opinion, Iraq will remain a primaryproliferation threat as long as Saddam remains in power." A similarview was expressed in a recent Rand Corporation study on Iraq byformer National Security Council staff member, Graham Fuller.
To insist that Saddam Hussein's commitment to rebuilding the mostpowerful military machine in the region is an obstacle to peace, isnot a "personalization" of the conflict between Iraq and the UnitedStates; it is merely a statement of fact.
After World War I, Germany was banned altogether from rebuildingits military industries, and from moving troops into the Ruhr Valley.The comparison with Iraq's current situation is illustrative. Whiledemilitarized zones have been created to protect Kurds in the northand Shiites in southern Iraq, no restrictions have been placed onIraq's military industries beyond the ban on unconventional weaponsdevelopment, manufacture, and possession. Iraq has pumped allavailable resources into rebuilding its military plants, without athought to international sanctions or to treaty restrictions. As aresult, Iraq is likely to reemerge as the predominant military powerin the region in very short order.
1The author of this Staff report chronicled the growth of Iraq'smilitary industries in The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq(Houghton-Mifflin, 1991, Boston & New York). Information in thisreport is drawn from the author's previous experience in Iraq,interviews with the directors of Iraqi weapons programs, and a broadrange of government and industry sources in France, Germany, Britain,Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and the United States, inaddition to those sources mentioned in the letter of transmittal.
2Middle East Defense News (MEDNEWS), March 9, 1992. MichaelEisenstadt, a military fellow at the Washington Institute for NearEast Policy, wrote in a March 1993 paper entitled "The Iraqi ArmedForces since the Gulf War: "Significant reconstruction activity hasbeen observed at more than two dozen military-industrial sites andmore than 200 buildings have been partially repaired. Iraq has nowreportedly resumed assembly of T-72 tanks, and limited production ofartillery, short-range missiles and rockets, ammunition, and sparesat some factories, although production is likely to remain limited aslong as sanctions remain in place."
3"Minister Pledges 'Surprises' in Industrial Output," Iraqi NewsAgency, May 4, 1992.
4IAEA 18th inspection report, page 5; released April 28, 1993.
5Reuter, March 24, 1993.
6"Iraq Nuclear Effort Is 'at Zero,' UN Says, International HeraldTribune, Sept. 3, 1992.
7Figures derived from OECD monthly trade statistics. Cf "Who'sBeen Arming Iraq," Middle East Defense News (MEDNEWS), Paris, France,April 15, 1991.
8The U.S. Department of Commerce licensed only a handful ofmachine-tools; much production equipment was shipped withoutlicenses. One example: 30-foot long boring machines intended formaking long-range artillery tubes.
9"Exports to Iraq: Minutes of Evidence," House of Commons, Tradeand Industry Committee, Tuesday, 26 Nov. 1991.
10An additional 94 Matrix Churchill tools were found in March 1993during the 18th IAEA inspection at the Al Huteen State Establishment,bringing the total number of Matrix Churchil machine-tools found inIraq to 148. See below.
11Confidential interview with the author, Nov. 14, 1991.
12Iraqi News Agency, jan. 13, 1993
13Reuter, Feb. 7, 1993.
14Reuter, Jan. 29, 1992.
15"UN Inspectors destroy Condor II equipment," MEDNEWS, March 30,1992.
16Baghdad INA, March 16, 1993.
17IAEA 18, April 28, 1993, page 5.
18Comments reproduced in the Wall Street Journal Europe, "What theIAEA Hasn't Found in Iraq," Jan. 28; a similar account of Zifferero'sattitude toward dismantling Iraq's manufacturing capabilities can befound in Gary Milhollin, "The Iraqi Bomb," The New Yorker, Feb. 1,1993. Milhollin notes that Zifferero, who has been given the task ofdismantling Iraq's nuclear weapons program, had sold Iraq plutoniumreprocessing hot cells and other equipment in the mid-1970s as thelead Italian government official in charge of nuclear exports.
19For more background, see chapters 1-4 of The Death Lobby: Howthe West Armed Iraq, op cit.
20Interview with the author in Haifa in Feb. 1992.
21"Rebuilding the Defense industry," MEDNEWS, March 9, 1992; "DoesIraq have the Bomb?," MEDNEWS, Jan. 25, 1993.
22Wireless File, USIS, Feb. 6, 1993.
23Jim Hoagland, International Herald Tribune, Oct. 15, 1992
24John Fialka, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 11, 1992.
25"German Companies Break Iraq Embargo," MEDNEWS, July 6, 1992
26"Jordan reverses embargo policy," Mednews, April 13, 1992.
27Le Monde, March 6, 1992.
28Interview with Oboronexport officials at the Paris Air Show,June 17, 1993.
29UPI, March 24, 1993.
30The facility, code-named Al Amil, or Project 7307, is locatedapproximately 6 km west of the Tarmiyah Electro-Magnetic IsotopeSeparation (EMIS) plant, and was inspected in 1992 by the IAEA. TheIraqi authorities told the IAEA that while Al Amil was no longerdoing work for the Iraqi nuclear program, ;production of liquidnitrogen - which can be used for liquid-fueled ballistic missiles -was continuing under German license. "Rebuilding the DefenseIndustry," MEDNEWS, March 9, 1992.