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JUNE 2004 : (IRAQ : US DEPT OF ENERGY REMOVES 1.8 TONS OF LOW ENRICHED URANIUM FROM AL TUWAITHA, WHERE IRAQ HAD BEEN CONDUCTING NUCLEAR RESEARCH) Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons development program at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer has told Congress.
... Duelfer testified that Iraq was "preserving and expanding its knowledge to design and develop nuclear weapons." One Iraqi laboratory "was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development," the top weapons inspector said. ...
Most of the recent nuclear research took place at Iraq's notorious al Tuwaitha weapons facility, where Saddam had stockpiled over 500 tons of yellow cake uranium ore since before the first Gulf War.
Iraq was also in talks with North Korea on the possibility of importing a 1,300 km missile system, the ISG chief revealed. Foreign missile experts were working in Iraq in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and had helped Iraq redesign the al-Samoud missile.
Saddam's 500-plus-ton uranium stockpile was being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the same agency that had responsibility for monitoring North Korea's nuclear program throughout the 1990s. In October 2002 Pyongyang stunned IAEA inspectors with the announcement that it was ready to produce nuclear weapons.
In June of this year [2004], the U.S. Energy Department removed 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium from al Tuwaitha.
Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press at the time that the low-enriched uranium stockpile could have produced enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb.
--- "Iraq Survey Chief Duelfer: Saddam Was Developing Nukes," Newsmax, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004 11:37 a.m. EDT, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/8/5/114239.shtml