This article originally provided by AP and The Jerusalem Post

Note: Pentagon official says Al-Qaqaa  explosives were intact in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion (see below)

October 25, 2004

380 tons of explosives missing in Iraq

Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST
Vienna, Austria

Nearly 400 tons of conventional explosives that can be used in the kind of car bomb attacks that have targeted US-led coalition forces in Iraq for months have vanished from a former Iraqi military installation, the UN nuclear agency said Monday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it fears the explosives may have fallen into insurgents' hands. Diplomats questioned why the United States didn't do more to secure the facility, which they say posed a well-known threat of being looted.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei was to report the explosives' disappearance to the UN Security Council later Monday, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told The Associated Press.

Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology told the nuclear agency on Oct. 10 that about 380 tons (350 metric tons) of explosives had gone missing from the former Al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad, Fleming said.

"The most immediate concern here is that these explosives could have fallen into the wrong hands," she told the AP.

Saddam Hussein's regime used Al-Qaqaa as a key part of its effort to build a nuclear bomb. Although the missing materials are conventional explosives known as HMX and RDX, the Vienna-based IAEA got involved because HMX is a "dual use" substance powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction.

Both are key components in plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex, which are so powerful that Libyan terrorists needed just a pound (0.45 kilos) to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 170 people.

Insurgents targeting coalition forces in Iraq have made widespread use of plastic explosives in a bloody spate of car bomb attacks. Officials were unable to link the missing explosives directly to the recent car bombings, but the revelations that they could have fallen into enemy hands caused a stir.

"This stuff was well-known. Everyone knew it was there, and it should have been among the first sites to be secured," said a European diplomat familiar with the disappearance of the explosives, which was first reported Monday by The New York Times.

At the Pentagon, an official who monitors developments in Iraq said US-led coalition troops had searched Al-Qaqaa in the immediate aftermath of the March 2003 invasion and confirmed that the explosives, which had been under IAEA seal since 1991, were intact. Thereafter the site was not secured by U.S. forces, the official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

The IAEA had periodically inspected the site between 1991 and 2003, including numerous times between November 2002 and March 2003, the official said. As of January 2003 the IAEA had "fully inventoried" the site, the official said. It was not clear what additional inspections were done between January and March.

This past weekend, the Pentagon ordered the U.S. military command in Baghdad and the Iraq Survey Group to investigate the IAEA report, the official said, adding it was not yet clear how or by whom the explosives were taken or whether any of the material had been used in attacks by the insurgency.

In Washington, Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry's campaign said the Bush administration "must answer for what may be the most grave and catastrophic mistake in a tragic series of blunders in Iraq."

"How did they fail to secure nearly 380 tons of known, deadly explosives despite clear warnings from the International Atomic Energy Agency to do so?" senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart said in a statement.

"These explosives can be used to blow up airplanes, level buildings, attack our troops and detonate nuclear weapons," Lockhart said. "The Bush administration knew where this stockpile was, but took no action to secure the site."

Al-Qaqaa is located near Youssifiyah, an area rife with ambush attacks. An Associated Press Television News crew which drove past the compound Monday saw no visible security at the gates of the site, a jumble of low-slung, yellow-colored storage buildings that appeared deserted.

Saddam was known to have used the site to make conventional warheads, and IAEA inspectors dismantled parts of his nuclear program there before the 1991 Gulf War. The experts also oversaw the destruction of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons.

The Iraqis told the nuclear agency the materials had been stolen and looted because of a lack of security, Fleming said.

"We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted," she said. After authenticating the Iraqi report, the IAEA informed the multinational force in Iraq through the US government on Oct. 15, Fleming said.

IAEA inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the 2003 invasion and have not yet been able to return despite ElBaradei's repeated urging that the experts be allowed back in to finish their work.

ElBaradei told the UN Security Council before the war that Iraq's nuclear program was in disarray and that there was no evidence to suggest it had revived efforts to build atomic weaponry.

In February 2003, a month before the invasion, ElBaradei told the United Nations that Iraq had declared that "HMX previously under IAEA seal had been transferred for use in the production of industrial explosives."

Only a resumption of inspections can determine what happened to the explosives since then, agency officials said.