Classified British government documents detail
Classified
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.
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