The key piece of evidence that US President George W. Bush has cited as proof that Saddam Hussein has sought to revive his program to make nuclear weapons was challenged on Thursday by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In his remarks to the UN General Assembly in September, Bush cited Iraq's attempts to buy special aluminum tubes as proof that Baghdad was seeking to construct a centrifuge network system to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs.
"Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon," Bush said.
But Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, offered a sharply different assessment in a report to the UN Security Council on Thursday.
ElBaradei said Iraqi officials had claimed that they sought the tubes to make 81mm rockets. ElBaradei indicated that he thought the Iraqi claim was credible.
"While the matter is still under investigation and further verification is foreseen, the IAEA's analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and last year appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets," the agency said in its report. "While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it."
While the discussion of Iraq's procurement efforts is highly technical, it is politically very significant. The primary rationale for going to war with Iraq rests on fears that Baghdad is striving to develop a nuclear weapon. The argument for military intervention, in effect, is that Iraq was much closer to a nuclear weapon before the 1991 Persian Gulf War than most experts thought and might be again.
US officials have long been concerned that Iraq would try to revive its nuclear weapons program and have cited several pieces of evidence.
First, after the 1991 Gulf War UN inspectors learned that Iraq had planned to build a centrifuge plant of 1,000 machines.
Second, British intelligence has reported that Iraq wanted to produce a special magnet that would be suitable for a gas centrifuge system.
Another important indicator, officials said, was Iraq's efforts to procure special aluminum tubes. In a report titled A Decade of Deception and Defiance, the White House asserted that Iraq had sought to buy thousands of tubes over a 14-month period to make centrifuges for enriching uranium. Though the shipments were blocked, officials said, the White House said they demonstrated that Iraq was striving to become a nuclear power.
Still, American intelligence was never of a single mind on the question of aluminum tubes. While there have been varying assessments, the dominant view among American intelligence analysts -- one backed by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency -- is that the precise dimensions and specifications of the tubes indicated that they were intended for use in making centrifuges. But some officials in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department have questioned this analysis, saying that the tubes might be intended to make rockets.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have taken the position that the CIA's case is compelling. Senior officials said that some of the tubes sought were of a type used to make centrifuges and carried technical specifications that made it difficult to think they could be used for anything else.
Asked about the new assessment, a senior Bush administration official said: "I think the Iraqis are spinning the IAEA. The majority of the intelligence community has the same view as before."
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