Libya can't explain disappearance of nuke plans

World Tribune

Monday, September 15, 2008


LONDON — The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed the disappearance of Libyan nuclear weapons plans.

IAEA said documents regarding a nuclear production plant, including information on nuclear weapon design, have gone missing in Libya. An agency report said boxes of plans for the production of a plutonium fuel facility could not be found and that the information had been in electronic form as well.

"Libya has been unable to explain where these plans are," an agency source said.
The report, distributed to members of the IAEA's board of governors on Sept. 12, said the proposed Libyan plant was meant to produce 10 kilograms of plutonium per year.

The report, the first on Libya since 2004, said the plans were bought from the network led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, which operated in 12 countries, including Iran, South Korea, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

"Much of the sensitive information coming from the network existed in electronic form, enabling easier use and dissemination," the report said.

"This includes information relating disturbingly to nuclear weapons design. A substantial amount of sensitive information related to the fabrication of a nuclear weapon was available to members of the network."

The missing nuclear plans represented one of several questions regarding Libya's nuclear weapons program, renounced by Tripoli in 2003. The agency, reporting contacts since 1984, said Tripoli lied about its relationship with the Khan network.

The agency said inspectors verified all of the nuclear material reported by Libya. But the report could not rule out that Libya was still concealing nuclear material and activities.