From correspondents in Vienna, Austria

October 27, 2004
REVELATIONS that nearly 400 tonnes of conventional explosives have gone missing in Iraq have experts wondering what other weapons might be in jeopardy of falling into insurgent or terrorist hands.

Even the US State Department concedes it can't provide "100 per cent security for 100 per cent of the sites". (editor: begs the question: What percent do you guard and why not a 100%?)

By all accounts, Iraq is studded with weapons depots - many in places where US-led forces are preoccupied with their fiercest fighting.

Troubling questions about what other weapons might be vulnerable to looting have arisen since the UN nuclear agency's warning this week that 342 tonnes of non-nuclear explosives disappeared from the former Al-Qaqaa military installation south of Baghdad.

"You'd think that those sites would be the highest priority for guarding in the immediate aftermath of the invasion," said Shannon Kyle, senior researcher on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden.

The explosives missing from Al-Qaqaa alone could produce hundreds of thousands of bombs - more than enough to "fuel an insurgency literally for years", Mr Kyle said today.

The rest is here: The Australian