[Enchante]

Just parking some more links on this thread for background info:


A nuclear black market?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/file_on_4/6401491.stm


....and some other interesting background info:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3566701.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3887373.stm

[silverleaf]

The Africanists at the State Department (typified by Joe Wilson, a man with important understandings of trivial places and things) - and some Bush haters buried in CIA working groups (typified by washed-up bed hopping Valerie Plame) ) were adamant that this could never happen
because "the French control the uranium mines in Africa'

Oh my, were they pi$$ed because the Bush policy team set aside their "analysis"

Now what? (sound of crickets chirping)

[Enchante]

"Officially, no uranium at all should now be leaving the country. But the United Nations has reported that in the past six years more than 50 cases of smuggled uranium have been seized in Congo."

Usually what is caught/seized from any long-existing smuggling operation is only a very small fraction of what has gotten through, especially in a place as lawless and corrupt as the DR of Congo. If the UN reports seizure of "50 cases" (don't know what quantities those cases may contain) it is reasonable to suspect that hundreds or even thousands of such "cases" of uranium have gotten out of the country through the years.....