Iraqi missile motors and other weapons-related equipment have been smuggled to Europe for recycling in scrapyards after they were left unguarded following the US invasion last year, UN inspectors said in a report released on Monday.
Several sites in Iraq that once contained equipment that could have been used for biological or chemical weapons have been emptied and dismantled since May last year, according to the report to the UN Security Council.
It made clear that the US-led occupation force had not protected sites or items that inspectors tagged before the war because of their potential use in weapons of mass destruction.
"A number of sites which contained dual-use equipment that was previously monitored by UN inspectors has been systematically taken apart," said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the inspectors. "The question this raises is what happened to equipment known to have been there."
The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), sidelined by the US since the invasion of Iraq, did not say all the disappeared materials were banned weapons.
But it showed before-and-after satellite pictures of a denuded missile-related site, the Shumokh stores, northwest of Baghdad, and photos of a missile engine discovered in a scrapyard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam.
The report said an engine of SA-2 surface-to-air missiles also used by Iraq for its Al Samoud 2 missile program was found in Rotterdam. The engine had been tagged by the United Nations Special Commission in 1996.
Last year, UNMOVIC declared the Al Samoud 2 banned as it had a range of more than 150km, the limit set by the Security Council. The inspectors destroyed two-thirds of Iraq's Al Samoud missiles before they were withdrawn from Iraq on the eve of the Iraq war, but some 25 of the missiles remained in mid-March last year.
"The existence of missile engines originating in Iraq among scrap in Europe may affect the accounting of proscribed engines known to have been in Iraq's possession," UNMOVIC said.
The report said the UN inspectors also found papers showing illegal contracts by Iraq for a missile guidance system, laser-ring gyroscopes and a variety of production and testing equipment not previously disclosed.
UNMOVIC also complained it had no access to the reports of the US-organized Iraq Survey Group (ISG) which continues to search for unconventional arms in Iraq.
It said that testimony the ISG presented to the US Senate on unmanned aerial-vehicles programs and long-range missiles was not detailed enough for the commission's experts to determine whether the data had been known to UNMOVIC.
UNMOVIC said it was trying to determine to what extent the contracts had been fulfilled and items delivered to Iraq.
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