Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

U.N.: Traces of Plutonium Found in Egypt

Updated 10:46 AM ET November 5, 2004


By GEORGE JAHN

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - U.N. experts have found traces of plutonium near an Egyptian nuclear facility and are investigating whether it could be weapons-related or simply a byproduct of the country's peaceful atomic activities, diplomats told The Associated Press on Friday.

The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned against assuming that Egypt might have contravened the Nonproliferation Treaty by trying to separate plutonium, a substance used in nuclear weapons. The traces could be from a cracked research reactor fuel element or have other origins that have nothing to do with weapons research, they said.

"From time to time, these things pop up in places they should not be at," said a diplomat familiar with the investigations of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. "Most of the time, there is a reasonable answer."

Still, he said IAEA experts were considering all scenarios that would explain the origin of the particles pending the completion of analysis of the environmental samples in several European laboratories.

The diplomat said the IAEA's information was still too sketchy to firmly establish how old the plutonium traces were but suggested they appeared to have been released into the environment no later than the 1980s.

Egypt appeared to turn away from the pursuit of a nuclear weapons program decades ago. The Soviet Union and China reportedly rebuffed its requests for nuclear arms in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, Egypt gave up the idea of building a plutonium production reactor and reprocessing plant.

Egypt runs small-scale nuclear programs for medical and research purposes. Plans were floated as recently as 2002 to build the country's first nuclear power reactor, but no construction date has been announced.

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pri&dt=041105&cat=news&st=newsd865q0ug0&src=....



Egypt rejects claims IAEA chief helping it secretly
Allegations that Baradei aids clandestine nuclear program are 'totally baseless'

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

VIENNA: Egypt's ambassador to the UN atomic agency blasted as "totally baseless" a French newspaper report Tuesday that the Egyptian head of the agency, Mohammed al-Baradei, was helping Cairo hide a secret nuclear program.

"There is no clandestine program and therefore there is no dossier," Ambassador Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy said.

"The issue of a connection between Egypt and Tripoli in the nuclear field is totally baseless," Ramzy said.

He was reacting to a report in the French newspaper Liberation, citing unnamed Western diplomats, that the now dismantled Libyan nuclear program "had Egyptian links." The United States and Britain struck a deal in December for Libya to abandon its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Libya followed through on the deal, with the evacuation of nuclear equipment supervised by Baradei's Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In its nuclear program Libya had "worked not only for itself but also, secretly, for the Egyptians," Liberation said.

Liberation said the charges "by ricochet now are reaching Mohammed al-Baradei, accused by some diplomatic missions of using his influence as the head of the IAEA to put the brakes on the agency truly plunging into this dossier."

IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said the agency's "policy is not to comment on safeguards activities in any individual country. I can assure you that we apply the same verification standard in all countries where we apply safeguards. When we have significant findings we report them to our Board of Governors."


Ramzy said the IAEA "is pursuing the clandestine market (that supplied Libya with nuclear technology) and absolutely no link to Egypt has been found.

"All our nuclear activities are subject, according to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to the total supervision of the agency (IAEA) and we always come out with a clean bill of health so there is no problem," Ramzy said.

He said he thought the Liberation report was coming out "for reasons of a political agenda," an apparent reference to the United States.

Baradei last week reported to the UN Security Council about explosives that have disappeared from Iraq since the US invasion, setting off a scandal that embarrassed US President George W. Bush while he campaigns for re-election.

The Liberation story said charges were circulating in diplomatic circles that Baradei is "a key element in Egyptian strategic policy, with a mission to favor Cairo in getting nuclear technology and information transfers." Ramzy said that Baradei was an impartial international civil servant.

By Michael Adler, Agence France Presse

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=9821



France never hears about Egypt's secret nuclear program

Egypt-France, Politics, 11/4/2004
France said that it has never heard of Egypt's clandestine nuclear program, noting that the first time it heard about Egypt's supposed secret nuclear program was through reports published in one of the French newspapers yesterday, said French Foreign Ministry Spokesman Herve Ladsous.

Ladsous added that the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA and its Chief Mohammed Al-Baradei must refute these reports, noting that Egypt can also respond to the allegations.

Ladsous pointed out that his country has no information in this respect; therefore it has no comments on what was published in the French Daily Libration.

http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/041104/2004110429.html