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Nuclear and missile threats
contained
By Charles Recknagel
PRAGUE - As the debate rages over how much more
time to give UN arms inspectors in Iraq, clear
differences are emerging in how different parties view
the threat posed by Iraq's suspected weapons programs.
Washington and London have called the threat
immediate. That argument hinges largely on US officials'
arguments that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could
supply weapons of mass destruction to international
terrorist groups to attack the United States or other
Western targets.
In the wake of the September
11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, US President
George W Bush has called such a risk unacceptable and
has indicated that he wants Iraq disarmed in a matter of
weeks, not months, to remove it.
Other states
have not widely adopted the US-British position.
Officials in Paris, Berlin, Beijing and Moscow argue
that Iraq is a regional security problem, that is, a
military, not a terrorist, threat that can be safely
dealt with through a conventional disarmament process.
That process is now in progress since UN arms
inspectors returned to work in November after being
banned from Iraq for four years.
To learn more
about how arms experts view the dangers posed by Iraq's
suspected weapons-of-mass-destruction programs, RFE/RL
recently interviewed two specialists at the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute in Sweden.
Our correspondent began by asking Shannon Kile,
an expert on nuclear-weapons and missile programs, to
describe the status of Baghdad's efforts to develop a
nuclear bomb.
Kile said that Iraq had an active
nuclear-weapons programs prior to the 1991 Gulf War and
was widely believed at that time to be just several
years away from developing a usable weapon. But in 1998,
after years of arms inspections, the International
Atomic Energy Agency certified that Iraq's
infrastructure for the nuclear program was destroyed and
that its weapons-grade material had been confiscated.
Kile said that today there is no evidence that
Iraq has revived its dismantled nuclear program. "We
would have to say now that there is no evidence that
Iraq has tried to revive its nuclear program or that it
has a nuclear program currently under way. If they
wanted to develop an indigenous capability to produce
fissile materials, those facilities would almost
certainly be detected," Kile said.
Kile said
that any Iraqi nuclear program would require
substantial, and visible, facilities to enrich uranium
to the point it can be used as fissile material in a
nuclear bomb.
Kile said that arms control
experts are concerned about reports that Iraq has sought
to purchase natural uranium from Africa. But he said
that such material is only a first step in a much more
complicated chain of events required to produce enriched
uranium and a nuclear weapon. "What is troubling is that
Iraq currently has no use for uranium of that sort. It
has no nuclear power reactors or civilian nuclear
program under way except for a very small research
facility which is used for producing medical-grade
isotopes," Kile said. [But], of course, just having the
material itself, that's a long way from having a
complete fuel cycle, [meaning], that doesn't do anything
about getting them toward having a uranium-enrichment
capability or any of the other necessary steps in the
fuel cycle toward developing nuclear weapons."
Instead, nuclear arms inspectors' main concerns
over Iraq are that Baghdad could one day procure
substantial amounts of fissile material from foreign
sources as the basis for making its own bomb. Iraq is
believed to have a workable design for a bomb and teams
of capable nuclear scientists who could assemble one. "I
think most people agree that Iraq does have a viable
nuclear weapon design and they have the technical
expertise in place that they would probably be able to
assemble a device within six to 12 months, or maybe up
to two years, if they were able to acquire the fissile
material from outside sources," Kile said.
But
Kile noted that, so far, there is no evidence to suggest
that Iraq has obtained, or even could obtain, sufficient
quantities of fissile material with which to produce a
nuclear device. "There have been numerous reports of
illicit smuggling and trafficking in nuclear and fissile
materials in the last decade. As far as I know, there
are no credible reports of materials being smuggled or
otherwise acquired in the amounts that would allow a
state or a sub-state group to actually manufacture a
nuclear weapon," Kile said.
While Iraq has
sought to develop nuclear weapons, it has also
maintained an ambitious missile program that one day
might be used to carry them or other weapons of mass
destruction.
Iraq's missile program was highly
visible during the 1991 Gulf War, when Baghdad launched
scores of Soviet-designed long-range Scud missiles
against countries including Saudi Arabia and Israel.
It is uncertain how many remaining Scud missiles
Baghdad may have been able to hide from arms inspectors
in the 1990s and still have ready for use. But arms
inspectors do know that Iraq recently has been trying to
extend the striking distance of much shorter-range
missiles that it is permitted to keep under UN
restrictions.
Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix
told the Security Council this week that during the past
four years Iraq has field-tested a liquid-fueled
missile, known as the Al-Samud 2, to a maximum distance
of 183 kilometers. It has also tested a solid-propellant
missile, the Al-Fatah, to a maximum distance of 161
kilometers. Both exceed the UN limit for Iraqi missiles
of 150 kilometers.
Blix also said the new
missiles, which do not have sufficient range to reach
Israel, have already been provided to the Iraqi armed
forces.
Kile said that Iraq's missile programs
worry arms inspectors because it is difficult to know
exactly how far the missiles' range could be extended
beyond what has already been proven in the field tests.
"The trouble there is that nobody knows exactly what the
ranges would be, because we know that Iraq has rebuilt
the so-called casting chambers which were previously
destroyed by the United Nations, and they can use those
to make missiles with significantly longer ranges - we
just don't know how long," Kile said.
But he
said that now that arms inspectors have returned to
Iraq, they should represent a sufficient safeguard
against Iraq conducting any further field tests that
would be needed to turn the upgraded rockets into
reliable battlefield weapons. "Presumably, at some point
they would want to test those missiles, and that would,
of course, be detected by both the inspectors and other
states. The missiles could be developed, but you would
want to be able to flight-test them, and, in the absence
of flight testing, you could never have confidence in
their reliability or accuracy," Kile said.
US
officials have suggested that Iraq may turn weapons of
mass destruction, which include missiles, over to
terrorist groups. But arms experts say that there is
little reason for Baghdad to do this because of the
difficulty in smuggling missiles and the ease with which
they can be traced to the manufacturer.
Beyond
nuclear weapons and missiles, Iraq has long engaged in
programs to develop biological and chemical arms. Much
of the liveliest debate over the immediacy of the
dangers Iraq poses focuses on these programs, because
they are the easiest to hide from inspectors and foreign
intelligence services.
Copyright (c) 2002,
RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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