IAEA Says It Warned U.S. About Explosives

[Career Prole]

VIENNA, Austria - U.S. officials were warned about the vulnerability of explosives stored at Iraq (news - web sites)'s Al-Qaqaa military installation after another facility — the country's main nuclear complex — was looted in April 2003, the U.N. nuclear agency said Thursday.


The International Atomic Energy Agency cautioned American officials directly about what was kept at Al-Qaqaa, the main storage facility in Iraq for so-called high explosives, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.


The disclosure shed new light on what the United States knew about Al-Qaqaa, which held 377 tons of high explosives that have vanished — an issue that has become a flashpoint in the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign.

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An IAEA official told The Associated Press the explosives were stored in hundreds of large, heavy cardboard drums that probably would have required trucks and forklifts to handle. The U.S. military has said it would be difficult to haul away so much material unnoticed once troops reached the area.


Fleming did not say which officials were notified or when, but she said the IAEA — which had put storage bunkers at the site under seal two months before the war — alerted the United States about Al-Qaqaa after the Tuwaitha nuclear complex was looted. The IAEA said it informed U.S. officials separately of the Tuwaitha looting on April 10.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041028/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_weapons

Cardboard drums...hmmm...sounds familiar.

[Moderator]

1. Duplicate

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