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Iraq Denies Nuclear Bomb Claim
Monday, September 9, 2002
(15:32)
By Hassan Hafidh
Reuters

"What Mr. Tony Blair and Mr. Bush are telling the international community is full distortion of facts...to justify an evil aim which is targeting Iraq and imposing U.S. hegemony in the region."

TUWEITHA, Iraq -- Reuters
Iraq has denied fresh U.S. accusations it is trying to make a nuclear bomb and has opened to reporters a former nuclear facility it says is now being used for agricultural and medical research.

The media tour was part of an Iraqi campaign to repudiate U.S. claims it is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and trying to make a nuclear bomb.

Saeed al-Mousawi, a senior Foreign Ministry official, told foreign reporters at Tuweitha nuclear plant, 12 miles south of Baghdad, the new charges were a "distortion of facts."

He showed a satellite picture of the plant -- largely destroyed by U.S.-led allied bombing in the 1991 Gulf War -- which he said had been recently produced by the West to prove that Baghdad was developing a nuclear bomb.

"The site was completely destroyed and it cannot be used (for any nuclear activity) any more," the head of the site, Fa'iz Hussein, said.

Reporters touring the site saw piles of debris and damaged structures and equipment, as well as buildings which Iraq erected in 1994.

"These buildings...they are either for environment research, medical or pharmaceutical facilities or a plant for agricultural research," Mousawi said on Monday.

Reporters were taken inside the buildings, where they saw workers producing medical kits for the treatment of kidney and liver diseases.

At another building, staff were working in laboratories which officials said were used for agricultural research.

* U.S. ACCUSATIONS
(More: The Financial Times News Source)
2002 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan