Ukrainians seize radioactive substance, arrest two

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian security officers have arrested two Middle Eastern men whom they said possessed a substance touted by sellers as an ingredient in nuclear weapons and dismissed by others as a hoax.

Security agents in the southern city of Odessa seized 24 pounds of a substance they said was radioactive and identified as "red mercury," a State Security Service spokesman said Monday on condition of anonymity. He said they arrested two men from a Middle Eastern country.

The spokesman would not say what country the men were from or where the material came from. He said the arrests were made several weeks ago.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, black marketeers have been peddling substances they call red mercury, apparently passing it off to buyers as a highly radioactive compound that purportedly was developed in Soviet nuclear facilities and could be used in powerful weapons.

Samples that have turned up in Europe have proved to be bogus, however, and many scientists and law enforcement officials say the substance does not exist or is far less potentially dangerous than it has been made out to be.

Western governments and the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, have repeatedly warned that several former Soviet republics including Ukraine have become a marketplace for radioactive materials.

This month, Ukrainian authorities arrested several people they said were involved in an attempt to purchase cesium-137, a highly radioactive material seen as a likely ingredient in a "dirty bomb." Earlier this year, they arrested a man trying to take one pound of uranium into neighboring Hungary.