Posted on 02/09/2004 9:29:58 AM PST by knighthawk
KIEV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukraine denied Monday a report it had sold tactical nuclear weapons to al Qaeda, saying it had never controlled the former Soviet arms on its territory which had passed straight into Russian hands. Sunday, the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper quoted sources close to al Qaeda as saying the group bought the weapons in suitcases in a deal arranged when Ukrainian scientists visited the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1998.
But Ukrainian officials said its scientists could not have acquired such weapons, as Russia controlled nuclear warheads left in Ukraine after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and removed them under an international deal signed three years later.
"During all those years of independence not one Ukrainian scientist even stood close to nuclear warheads which were in Ukraine," said Volodymyr Gorbulin, a presidential adviser.
"Everything was done by specialists from the 12th general command of the Soviet Union's Defense Ministry, and then by Russia's Defense Ministry."
"It is just laughable to talk about Ukrainian scientists (selling nuclear arms)," he said.
Russia's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the al-Hayat report.
In the late 1990s a former Russian national security adviser said up to 100 portable suitcase-sized bombs from the Soviet arsenal were unaccounted for. Moscow has denied such weapons existed.
An analyst at Ukraine's independent think-tank Razumkov also said that only Russia had controlled the weapons.
"In my opinion this report has no foundation," Anatoly Grytsenko said.
The United States blames al Qaeda and its figurehead Osama bin Laden for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
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