Blair in bid to oust top UN nuclear inspector

BRITAIN tried to oust the man leading the international campaign to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapons programme while he was in the middle of negotiations with Tehran, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

Classified British government documents detail Tony Blair's attempts to stop Mohammed El Baradei getting a third term in charge of the UN's nuclear inspectorate, amid claims that he had lost the confidence of the United States.

DECEMBER 2002 : (US ASKS EGYPT TO GRANT ACCESS TO SCIENTISTS WHO WERE EMPLOYED IN IRAQ'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM; EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT MUBARAK DID NOT COOPERATE WITH THE REQUEST, ACCORDING TO LATER REPORT BY "MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE" aka MENL) In December 2002, the United States asked Egypt to grant access to scores of scientists who were employed in Saddam's nuclear program. The Egyptian regime of President Hosni Mubarak did not cooperate with the U.S. request, officials said.- "U.S. QUESTIONS EGYPT ON WMD, MISSILES ," by Middle East Newsline staff, Middle East Newsline, 6/17/03

JUNE 2003 mid : (CAIRO, EGYPT : US UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE BOLTON WARNS EGYPT ON ITS INVOLVEMENT WITH IRAQ & NORTH KOREA ON MISSILES & WMD PROGRAMS) The United States has again launched an examination of Egypt's missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton held talks over the weekend in Cairo with Egyptian leaders on a range of what U.S. officials termed were sensitive subjects. They said the issues included Egypt's WMD and missile programs and Cairo's cooperation with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea.
"All of the testimony and evidence found in Iraq have shown significant Egyptian involvement in Iraq's missile and WMD programs," a U.S. official said. "The issue has become too big to ignore without undermining the credibility of the administration."
In December 2002, the United States asked Egypt to grant access to scores of scientists who were employed in Saddam's nuclear program. The Egyptian regime of President Hosni Mubarak did not cooperate with the U.S. request, officials said.
-------- "U.S. QUESTIONS EGYPT ON WMD, MISSILES ," by Middle East Newsline staff, Middle East Newsline, 6/17/03

NOVEMBER 2004 : (TRACES OF PLUTONIUM FOUND NEAR EGYPTIAN NUCLEAR FACILITY) VIENNA, Austria - U.N. experts have found traces of plutonium near an Egyptian nuclear facility and are investigating whether it could be weapons-related or simply a byproduct of the country’s peaceful atomic activities, diplomats told The Associated Press on Friday. -------- "UN: Traces of Plutonium Found in Egypt," November 5, 2004, via Little Green Footballs

Posted elsewhere on FR , one of my comments added:

ElBaradei has served as the Director General for the IAEA for two terms since December 1, 1997, and is now set for a third term after the current US administration reluctantly reversed its opposition to him in June 2005. According to the Washington Post* [1] several intercepts were made, on ElBaradei's phone calls concerning Iran's nuclear program, in which the Bush administration hoped to find information that would help to remove ElBaradei as director of the IAEA. [* Piasa's note: Thanks for leaking]
ElBaradei has questioned the U.S. rationale for the war in Iraq since the 2003 Iraq disarmament crisis, when he, along with Hans Blix, led a team of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, seeking evidence of weapons of mass destruction. He is also accused by the US for his lenient approach in dealing with the Iranian program.
There is no rival candidate for the upcoming term, though the US tried to convince Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who declined, to run for the job. The decision of the IAEA board of governors was still postponed through May 2005. [2]
On 9 June, the US dropped its objections after a meeting between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ElBaradei, which opened the way to approval by the IAEA Board of Governors meeting on 13 June. [3] [edit] October surprise
Ten days before the 2004 US presidential election, a query by ElBaradei about 377 tons of missing explosives in Iraq surfaced in what many pundits had referred to as the then-expected "October surprise".... 143 posted on 07/31/2005 10:01:19 AM PDT by Sam Hill | To 141 |

Egypt rejects charges IAEA chief helping it with secret nuclear program
Khaleej Times Online ^ | 2 November 2004 | AFP

VIENNA - Egypt’s ambassador to the UN atomic agency blasted as “totally baseless” a French newspaper report Tuesday that the Egyptian head of the agency Mohamed ElBaradei was helping Cairo hide a secret nuclear program.

“There is no clandestine program and therefore there is no dossier,” ambassador Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy told AFP.

“The issue of a connection between Egypt and Tripoli in the nuclear field is totally baseless,” Ramzy said.

He was reacting to a report in the French newspaper Liberation, citing unnamed Western diplomats, that the now dismantled Libyan nuclear program “had Egyptian links.”

The United States and Britain struck a deal in December for Libya to abandon its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and Libya followed through on the deal, with the evacuation of nuclear equipment supervised by ElBaradei’s Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Libya had in its nuclear program “worked not only for itself but also, secretly, for the Egyptians,” Liberation said.

Liberation said the charges “by ricochet now are reaching Mohamed ElBaradei, accused by some diplomatic missions of using his influence as the head of the IAEA to put the brakes on the agency truly plunging into this dossier.” IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky refused to comment on the Liberation report.

Ramzy said the IAEA “is pursuing the clandestine market (that supplied Libya with nuclear technology) and absolutely no link to Egypt has been found.”

“All our nuclear activities are subject, according to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to the total supervision of the agency (IAEA) and we always come out with a clean bill of health so there is no problem,” Ramzy said. He said he thought the Liberation report was coming out “for reasons of a political agenda,” an apparent reference to the United States.

ElBaradei last week reported to the UN Security Council about explosives that have disappeared from Iraq since the US invasion, setting off a scandal that embarrassed US President George W. Bush while he campaigns for re-election, with the United States voting Tuesday.

ElBaradei is seeking to be re-elected as IAEA chief for what would be a third term in office but Washington opposes this, saying international civil servants should only serve two terms.

The Liberation story said there were charges circulating in diplomatic circles that ElBaradei is “a key element in Egyptian strategic policy, with a mission to favor Cairo in getting nuclear technology and information transfers.”

Ramzy said that ElBaradei was, as other Egyptians have been, an impartial international civil servant.

He said Egypt was “proud of the impartial way ElBaradei and others have conducted themselves,” referring also to Egyptian former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Egypt admits failing to report nuclear research to UN watchdog agency
AFP) ^ | Jan 27, 2005

Posted on 01/31/2005 8:38:43 PM PST by jb6

Egypt admitted Thursday to failing to report a "number of research experiments" to the UN atomic energy agency, after diplomats said the agency was investigating an Egyptian lab that could be used to make plutonium, a nuclear weapons material. But "Egypt is cooperating with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)" and feels the "research experiments and activities ... most of which took place in the distant past are consistent with the NPT," the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Egyptian embassy said in a statement released in Vienna.

The statement said stronger safeguards measures by the IAEA "since the 1990's have resulted in not reporting to the agency, in an appropriate and timely manner, a number of research experiments and activities."

Egyptian ambassador Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy told AFP it was a case that with "strengthened safeguards, countries sometimes don't know what they are required to report."

He said news reports of Egyptian safeguards failures were "exaggerated" and that Egypt has a strictly peaceful nuclear program.

The statement said "Egypt understands that the agency is aware of the limited scope of the issue" and feels that the "agency values the level of cooperation Egypt is extending."

Egypt has not however signed an additional protocol to the NPT that allows for tough IAEA inspections.

IAEA officials refused to comment on the investigation.

Diplomats had told AFP last week that UN inspectors investigating undeclared nuclear activity in Egypt that could be related to atomic weapons development are checking out a reprocessing lab for making plutonium.

The reprocessing laboratory is at Egypt's Inshass center, 35 kilometresmiles) northeast of Cairo, where there are two research reactors.

The lab consists of "hot laboratories, procured from France in the early 1980s, which allow for treatment of spent fuel and laboratory-scale plutonium separation," a diplomat said. The diplomat said the IAEA had last October "checked, among other things, the historical records of the nuclear material in the hot cell labs and in the nuclear waste management center," in addition to interviewing people involved in research work.

The lab, which apparently has never been used for reprocessing, raises questions about an Egyptian nuclear program which is peaceful but may also be carefully structured to be able to move towards weapons development if Cairo decided to take this step, diplomats said.

But a diplomat close to the IAEA, who asked not to be named, said Egypt's undeclared work was small scale and not even comparable to South Korea, a non-atomic-weapons state which has admitted carrying out rogue nuclear experiments.

The IAEA has been intensively investigating Egypt since the middle of 2004 after it was tipped off to possible undeclared nuclear experiments, with much information coming from open-source scientific publications by Egyptian scientists, a diplomat said.

The experiments the IAEA is looking into involve making uranium metal, which could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium, and carrying out the first steps of uranium enrichment by making uranium tetrafluoride (UF4), the diplomat said.

Thanks! Lots to that Egyptian angle:

All In The Family...At The United Nations

Oil for Food was established in 1995: Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali was U.N. Secretary General. Geneva-based oil trading firm called AMEP (received Oil-For-Food Profits) run Fakhry Abdelnour, Mr. Boutros-Ghali's cousin.

AMEP board member Efraim Nadler, is Mr. Boutros-Ghali's brother-in-law and close friend to Benon Sevan, the former executive director of the Oil for Food program.

The Beneficiaries of Saddam's Oil Vouchers: The List of 270

Egypt: Khaled Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, son of the late Egyptian president, received 16.6 million barrels. 'Imad Al-Galda, a businessman and a member of the Egyptian parliament from President Mubarak's National Democratic Party, received 14 million barrels. Abd Al-Azim Mannaf, [5] editor of the Sout Al-Arab newspaper, received 6 million barrels. Muhammad Hilmi, editor of the Egyptian paper Sahwat Misr, [6] received an undisclosed number of barrels. The United Arab Company received 6 million barrels. The Nile and Euphrates Company received 3 million barrels. The Al-Multaqa Foundation for Press and Publication received 1 million barrels. [7]

Iraq calls for wider oil-for-food probe

Volcker said in the report there is no doubt that Saddam's government made money illegally and sought to reward friends and cultivate political influence. The major source of illicit funds to Iraq was from smuggling, to Jordan, to Turkey, eventually to Syria, and then to Egypt, he said.

Scandal in Baghdad: Millions Missing - French, Chinese Companies Involved

"The winners in the Iraqi cellular license tender were Saddam's most senior financiers, their Egyptian and Iraqi supporters, the bank BNP Paribas, European cellular corporations - particularly Alcatel and Chinese telecom interests such as Huawei," states the May 2004 Defense Department report.

And also, beyond Iraq--from Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., "A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK", 1999 [pdf file link]:

Due to the poor state of relations between Moscow and P’yongyang, the DPRK was not able to secure the FROG-7B directly from the Soviet Union. Attempts to acquire the FROG-7B were therefore limited to those countries that had previously received the system from the Soviet Union; were on good terms with the DPRK; and were willing to incur Moscow’s displeasure by selling or transferring the systems to the DPRK. At the time only a few countries met all of those conditions, including Egypt, Romania, and Syria.

As a result of the precipitous decline in Egyptian-Soviet relations and in return for the DPRK’s assistance during the October 1973 War, Egypt’s President Anwar el Sadat transferred a small number of Soviet-supplied FROG-7B TELs and rockets to the DPRK and agreed to cooperate in the field of missile development. This transaction may have been repayment for DPRK assistance during the 1973 War, or for spare parts and weapons acquired after the war.

SNIP

In 1979 the existing, though incipient, ballistic missile program was reorganized into an ambitious effort to achieve this goal.37 With this reorganization, both the FROG and HQ-2/SA-2 programs appear to have been refocused. The FROG program began to concentrate solely on maintenance of existing systems, while the HQ-2/SA-2 program focused on production and improvement of the SAM versions of these systems.38

Significant obstacles stood in the way of an indigenous capability to design and produce ballistic missiles. Most importantly, the DPRK did not have the skilled manpower or technology to design a ballistic missile from the ground up, as all its relevant expertise was confined to SAM, anti-ship cruise missile, and artillery rocket programs. To overcome these limitations, the DPRK again turned to Egypt, and the two countries concluded a series of new agreements to cooperate in missile development. The central focus of this cooperation was a program to reverse-engineer the Soviet R-17E (the version of the Scud B exported to Egypt) as an interim step towards future production of indigenously designed ballistic missiles with greater ranges and improved accuracies. Part of this agreement called for the exchange of scientists and technicians between the two countries. Egypt had long desired to produce long-range ballistic missiles, and shortly after the October 1973 War, it had initiated several feasibility studies for an improved Scud B.39 Cairo viewed cooperation with P’yongyang as a means to advance its own ballistic missile ambitions while conserving its resources. In addition to this expanded cooperation with Egypt, the DPRK apparently 37 The exact date of this reorganization is presently unknown. The 1979 date used here represents the best estimate currently available.

SNIP

It is estimated that between 1987 and 1992, the DPRK exported 250 missiles and related technology worth $580 million to Egypt, Iran, Libya, and Syria. Hwasong 5 and Hwasong 6 missiles are estimated to cost $1.5 to $2 million apiece.97

SNIP

Throughout the 1990s, there have been reports that Egypt, Libya, and Syria have been interested in obtaining or producing the No-dong. To date, there are no known sales of complete missile systems to any of the three countries.

Egypt’s involvement in the No-dong program is believed to be limited to the acquisition of Nodong-related technology or components. It continues to cooperate with the DPRK in a broad range of ballistic missile development activities. For example, in July 1999, the DPRK shipped Egypt specialty steel—with missile applications—through a PRC company in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, missile technicians continue to travel between the two countries.140

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