U.N. says it warned U.S. about explosives stockpile

VIENNA, Austria -- U.S. officials were warned about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Iraq's Al-Qaqaa military installation after another facility -- the country's main nuclear complex -- was looted in April 2003, the U.N. nuclear agency said Thursday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency cautioned American officials directly about what was kept at Al-Qaqaa, the main storage facility in Iraq for so-called high explosives, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

The disclosure shed new light on what the United States knew about Al-Qaqaa, which held 377 tons of high explosives that have vanished -- an issue that has become a flashpoint in the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign.

The explosives can be used to make car bombs that insurgents have used to target U.S.-led forces in Iraq. On Thursday, an armed group in Iraq claimed in a video to have obtained a large amount of the missing material -- HMX, RDX and PETN -- and threatened to use it against foreign troops.

Timing of looting

Iraqi officials say the materials were taken amid looting sometime after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces on April 9, 2003, though the Pentagon and President Bush are suggesting the ordnance could have been moved before the United States invaded on March 20, 2003.

An IAEA official told The Associated Press the explosives were stored in hundreds of large, heavy cardboard drums that probably would have required trucks and forklifts to handle. The U.S. military has said it would be difficult to haul away so much material unnoticed once troops reached the area.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld agreed.

"We would have seen anything like that," he said Thursday in a radio interview at the Pentagon. "The idea it was suddenly looted and moved out, all of these tons of equipment, I think is at least debatable."

Fleming did not say which officials were notified or when, but she said the IAEA -- which had put storage bunkers at the site under seal two months before the war -- alerted the United States about Al-Qaqaa after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted. The IAEA said it informed U.S. officials separately of the Tuwaitha looting on April 10.

"After we heard reports of looting at the Tuwaitha site in April 2003, the agency's chief Iraq inspector alerted American officials that we were concerned about the security of the high explosives stored at Al-Qaqaa," she said.

"It is also important to note that this was the main high explosives storage facility in Iraq, and it was well-known through IAEA reports to the Security Council," Fleming said.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei informed the United Nations in February 2003, and again in April of that year, that he was concerned about HMX explosives, which were stored at Al-Qaqaa, some 30 miles south of Baghdad.

The explosives' disappearance recently has dominated the presidential campaign, with Democratic nominee John Kerry saying the Bush administration's poor planning led to the loss of the dangerous material. The Pentagon contends Saddam Hussein's regime may have removed the explosives before the war.

The IAEA also sought Thursday to clarify reports that the amount of missing explosives may have been far less than what the Iraqis said in an Oct. 10 report to the nuclear agency.

ABC News, citing IAEA inspection documents, reported Wednesday that the Iraqis had declared 141 tons of RDX explosives at Al-Qaqaa in July 2002, but that the site held only three tons when it was checked in January 2003. The network said that could suggest that 138 tons were removed from the facility long before the March 2003 invasion.

Vice President Dick Cheney seized upon the ABC report Thursday, telling supporters in Wisconsin that Kerry had gotten the facts wrong in criticizing the Bush administration for the disappearance of the explosives.

Kerry is "just dead wrong. ... We know ... upwards to 125 tons had been removed" in January 2003 before the invasion, Cheney said. "He's just plain wrong on the facts."

But Fleming said most of the RDX -- about 125 tons -- was kept at Al-Mahaweel, a storage site under Al-Qaqaa's jurisdiction located about 30 miles outside the main Al-Qaqaa site. She also said about 10 tons already had been reported by Iraq as having been used for non-prohibited purposes between July 2002 and January 2003.

"IAEA inspectors visited Al-Mahaweel on Jan. 15, 2003, and verified the RDX inventory by weighing sampling," Fleming said. She said the RDX at Al-Mahaweel was not under seal but was subject to IAEA monitoring.

"IAEA inspectors were in the process of verifying this statement (the Iraqi inventory of its weapons) ... and would have proceeded later had they stayed in Iraq," Fleming said. The nuclear agency's inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the invasion and have not been allowed to return for general inspections despite ElBaradei's requests that they be allowed to finish their work.

The agency became involved at Al-Qaqaa because of the presence of 214 tons of HMX, which -- like RDX -- is a key component in plastic explosives but also can be used as an ignitor on a nuclear weapon. Fleming said it was the HMX that was the agency's main focus.

ABC said the inspection report noted the seals at Al-Qaqaa may have been useless because the storage bunkers had ventilation slats on the sides that could have been removed to give looters access to the explosives.

But Fleming said the inspectors had also checked the ventilation slats to ensure they had not been tampered with, and concluded "the confinement was sufficient" as long as the site was regularly checked. They could no longer do that once they pulled out on March 16.

IAEA inspectors last saw the Al-Qaqaa explosives on Jan. 15, 2003, when they took an inventory and placed fresh seals on the bunkers. Inspectors visited the site again on March 1, 2003, but didn't view the explosives because the seals were not broken, she said.

U.N. inspectors focusing on Iraq's long-range missile program visited the sprawling site on March 15, 2003 to tag missile warheads; they too left Iraq before the war started.

Agency inspectors have returned twice to Iraq since the war but focused only on Tuwaitha, a nuclear complex 12 miles south of Baghdad. They have not been allowed back to Al-Qaqaa.

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