APRIL 10, 2003 Thursday : (FORMER IAEA INSPECTOR KAY SAYS RECENTLY DISCOVERED TUWAITHA UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR WEAPONS SITE WAS MISSED BY UN INSPECTION TEAMS AFTER [OPERATION DESERT STORM] GULF WAR DESPITE RUMORS IT EXISTED) David Kay, a former IAEA chief nuclear inspector, said Thursday that the teams he oversaw after the 1991 Gulf War never found an underground site at Tuwaitha despite persistent rumors. "But underground facilities by definition are very hard to detect," he said. "When you inspect a place so often, you get overconfident about what you know. It would have been very easy for the inspectors to explain away any excessive radiation at Tuwaitha. The Iraqis could have hidden something clandestine in plain sight."- "Experts: U.S. 'Discovery' of Nuke Materials in Iraq Was Breach of U.N.-Monitored Site," Thursday, April 10, 2003 Associated Press via Fox News
SEPTEMBER 2003 : (FORMER NORTH KOREAN'S DIPLOMATIC REP TO THE IAEA,YUN HO JIN, IS ACCUSED OF ORDERING ALUMINUM TUBES SUITABLE FOR USE IN URANIUM ENRICHMENT FROM A GERMAN FIRM; MATERIALS WERE IMPOUNDED WHILE ABOARD A SHIP) HAMBURG, Germany (AFP) - A former North Korean diplomat is accused of ordering material from a German firm that could be used in the production of nuclear weapons, Germany's Der Spiegel reported in its Monday edition. The news magazine said a German businessman would go on trial in Stuttgart, southwest Germany, next month in connection with the case. The diplomat was named by Spiegel as Yun Ho Jin. It said he used to work as a Pyongyang representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. According to Der Spiegel, Yun Ho Jin ordered special aluminium tubes from the businessman which, experts say, are used to build gas ultracentrifuges in which uranium is enriched. The equipment was impounded in April after being loaded on board a ship. The unidentified businessman, who got to know the diplomat in the late 1980s, is accused of breaching trade export laws and "attempts to encourage production of a nuclear weapon." Experts from the IAEA, the German foreign ministry and the German foreign intelligence service are expected to testify, the magazine added. - "North Korean diplomat implicated in nuclear plot: German press," Agence France-Presse, September 21, 2003