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| Africa: North |
| UN clashes with U.S. over Libyan inspections |
| 2003-12-30 |
| Shhhh. Hear that? Can you make out what he’s saying? Me neither. Must be someone from the UN... carry on. United Nations inspectors don’t want American help in dismantling Libya’s nuclear program, the UN’s chief inspector said Tuesday. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said his agency plans to work alone despite the recent decision by the U.S. to send its own inspectors to Libya to help dismantle the country’s weapons program. Returning from a trip to the North African country where he inspected four nuclear sites, ElBaradei said on Monday that Libya was still years away from developing nuclear weapons. Washington believes the UN nuclear agency has underestimated the sophistication of Libya’s nuclear program. During ElBaradei’s trip, Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi assured the UN inspection team his country would co-operate fully with inspections and would dismantle its nuclear program. From the headline I expected some major banging of heads. But alas...’twas nothing. |
| Posted by:RW2004 |
| #6 Anyone want to bet the return addresses on this stuff leads to France and Germany? |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-12-31 8:47:57 PM |
| #5 Someone should compare the centrifuges in Libya and Iran. Libya may have manufactured for them for the mullahs and phoned GWB after the order was completed and shipped. Btw, more at this link... http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20031230_2448.html .....ElBaradei described the equipment he saw as, "nothing really special," calling them, "components which had not been assembled .... mothballed and in containers." "It was much more modest in comparison with the Iranian program, which is much more ambitious, large-scale industrial production" of enriching uranium, he said. Suspicions about Iran's nuclear activities prompted ElBaradei to tour Iran's nuclear facilities last February, including an incomplete plant in Natanz, nearly 300 miles south of Tehran. Diplomats said he was taken aback by the advanced stage of a project using thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. Iran insists its program aims only to produce energy and signed an agreement in December allowing snap IAEA inspections of its facilities. The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Libya seemed to posses far fewer centrifuges than Iran. While a few dozen were assembled, most were still in their original shipping crates and lined up along warehouse walls, as were crated uranium conversion units that were opened only for the visiting IAEA team, he said..... |
| Posted by: Nick 2003-12-30 10:47:56 PM |
| #4 United Nations inspectors don’t want American help in dismantling Libya’s nuclear program Seeing how the Libyans seem to be doing this voluntarily and on their own, why would it surprise anybody that the UN would want a nice tit job like this for themselves? No heavy lifting, no real need for them. The perfect UN job. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-12-30 8:28:13 PM |
| #3 Probably the UN's pissed that the US is actually serious about stopping proliferation. After all, the UN's program has been to cover up arms dealing and proliferation as much as they can. (Evidence? See Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and now Libya.) |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2003-12-30 8:25:04 PM |
| #2 I think it started when ElBaradei said his team was inspecting ?four? sites and the U.S./UK intel has 11 site that need to be inspected. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2003-12-30 5:54:24 PM |
| #1 Our own inspections of the weapons program of Libya will be very informative in determining the sophistication, origin, and capabilities of Libya's suppliers and equipment developers. This will help us in the WoT, which ElBaradei conveniently leaves out in his inspections. In short, we do not want Mo ElBaradei a critical link in our nation's security. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-12-30 4:43:48 PM |