Disputed Target in the Desert

From the outset, Iraq has claimed that the nearly completed, $260 million French-built research reactor, scheduled to be activated this summer was intended only to train Iraqi scientists and technicians in nuclear technology. A facility was first discussed in 1974 by then French Premier Jacques Chirac and Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The final agreement led to the erection of the 70-MW reactor at the Tammuz nuclear center in the desert at El-Tuwaitha. It was supported by an 800-kW minireactor, separately housed and untouched by the raid, that was used for minor experiments and to prepare radioactive materials.

Italian workers at the center had been completing four new laboratories, including one for fabricating natural uranium fuel. These labs were not hit, nor was an Italian-built "hot cell" lab, where Iraqi technicians could learn the techniques of handling radioactive materials, including theoretically, how to separate tiny amounts of plutonium from spent uranium fuel. Because plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons its possible production at the Tammuz site was central to the Israelis justification for the raid. The Iraqi-French contract required delivery of 70 kg of 93% enriched U-235 a grade and amount of uranium well suited for making nuclear weapons. In addition the 70-MW Tammuz reactor was 14 times as powerful as most research reactors, and Israeli physicists contend it could have been modified to readily produce weapons-grade plutonium.

The French, however, insist that any diversion of enriched uranium by the Iraqis for bombmaking, or conversion of the reactor for plutonium production would immediately have been spotted by the 150 French technical advisors at Tammuz or by International Atomic Energy Agency inspector charged with enforcing the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which Iraq signed in 1968. France had taken steps to minimize the possibility that nuclear fuel might be diverted for military purposes. Paris had promised, for example, to deliver only enough enriched uranium in a shipment to keep the reactor going, thus preventing the Iraqis from stockpiling the material. Last June, when the first 12 kg of uranium were shipped to Tammuz under careful IAEA and French supervision, the French took the precaution of irradiating the uranium to make it impossibe for the relatively unsophisticated Iraqi technicians to handle it without assistance. So far Iraq has not been found guilty of any violations. The most recent inspection of Tammuz facility took place in January. Reported IAEA Deputy Hans Gru"mm: "all fissionable material was accounted for. There has been no breach of treaty."

Though the Israelis insist that Iraq was only months away from constructing a bomb many international nuclear experts doubt that the Iraqis would have had the technical expertise to build a nuclear device for another ten years. Says a French official: "The danger is not that Iraq would build a bomb in the next year or two , but that by the end of the decade Iraq would have the know-how to do whatever it pleases without anyone's assistance.

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