Beirut, Lebanon — The father of Iraq's nuclear bomb program, speaking publicly for the first time since U.S. forces occupied Baghdad, called Monday for a UN probe of what nuclear inspectors knew before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and denied Saddam Hussein had tried to restart his atomic program.
Jafar Dhia Jafar said UN inspectors had “reached total conviction” that Iraq was free of nuclear weapons before the U.S.-led invasion yet failed to convey that to the Security Council.
“It was clear that reports of the United Nations to the Security Council should have been clear and courageous,” Mr. Jafar said. “I believe the United Nations should also investigate ... the facts that were known before the war and why they [nuclear inspectors] did not declare them to the security council.”
Mr. Jafar spoke during a discussion about the repercussions of the occupation of Iraq organized by the Beirut-based Center for Arab Unity Studies. Speaking mostly on the history and background of Iraq's nuclear program, he presented a paper jointly authored with another prominent Iraqi nuclear scientist denying Iraq had restarted its pursuit of atomic weapons.
“Saddam Hussein issued orders in July 1991 for the destruction of all banned weapons, in addition to the systems to produce them. It was carried by the Special Republican Guard forces,” wrote Mr. Jafar and Noman Saad Eddin al-Noaimi, a former director-general of Iraq's nuclear program.
“We can confirm with absolute certainty that Iraq no longer possessed any weapons of mass destruction after its unilateral destruction of all its components in the summer of 1991, and did not resume any such activity because it no longer had the foundations to resume such activity,” they wrote.
Three days before the invasion last March, Vice President Dick Cheney said Iraq was “trying once again to produce nuclear weapons,” even though UN inspectors had found no such evidence.
