DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly Report Exclusively: US-Russian Teams Hunting Iraq-bound Uranium Five Weeks
28 September: The mysterious tip-off that led Turkish paramilitary police to the taxi cab, transporting 33 lbs of enriched uranium in a lead container hidden under a seat, came from the joint US-Russian undercover team that has for five weeks been tracking Iraqi operatives who were sent by the Iraqi ruler to hunt for the essential ingredient in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The news released Saturday, September 28, does not say when the seizure took place.
This joint team, working out of Moscow, was first uncovered by DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 74 on August 23:
Operatives of the American and the Russian SVR secret services are jointly engaged in an epic hunt for a band of undercover Iraqi operatives racing up and down Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan this past week. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive sources, the Iraqis have been sent by Saddam Hussein on an illicit hunt for nuclear material, particularly weapons-grade enriched Uranium-235. They are also trying to buy black market missile parts.
American and Russian task forces have set up a joint command center in Moscow to coordinate the high-stakes chase.
The alarm was first sounded in Washington and Moscow in early August by reports of Iraq agents splashing out with multi-million dollar offers for nuclear material. They did not take the information too seriously at first. But then came further reports that 15 Iraqi agents had split up into three groups, two covering Kazakhstan and the Ukraine and the third, Belarus.
The American and Russian presidents put their heads together and decided their intelligence operational divisions would mount a hot pursuit of the Iraqi agents, hoping to get to them before they reached their objective.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources say the chase is still on.
The haul in the southern Turkish province of Sanliurfia, which borders on Syria, may have given President George W. Bush the conclusive evidence he needs to prove that Saddam Hussein is racing to build up a nuclear warfare capability and may use it in the approaching war. It may be the clincher in Washington’s bid for support at home and abroad in its decision to use military force against Iraq.
On Saturday, American and British representatives, having been rejected by France, arrived in Moscow to win the Russians round to Washington’s case against Saddam Hussein.
There is little doubt that the Turkish smugglers who had been promised $5 million for the uranium were on their way to the Syrian or Iraqi borders to hand it over to their Iraqi clients.
Despite the US-Russian success in tracking down one shipment of enriched uranium sufficient for the fabrication of several small bombs, there is no knowing for certain if previous consignments have not got through to destination and were already being processed.
Refining U-235 out of natural U-238 can be done directly instead of using a reactor, but it is quite hard. Those centrifuge stories you may see are about that other route - that is equipment needed to pick U-235 out of natural uranium.
It now appears the uranium was less than originally stated, hundreds of grams not kilograms. 15 kilograms is probably the weight of the whole thing they took out of the car, shielding and all.
On breeder reactors, North Korea and Iran have both tried to go that route. The NKs had a reactor built, and "promised" to shut it down in return for payoffs from us. The Russians are helping Iran build a reactor as we speak. Notice that these are the three countries that made the "axis of evil" speach - the three countries that support terrorism abroad and also have active nuclear research programs...