Iraq Confirms U.S. Has Removed Nuclear Material

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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites)'s interim government confirmed Thursday the United States has removed radioactive material from Iraq, saying ousted dictator Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) could have used it to develop nuclear weapons.

U.S. and U.N. officials said Wednesday Washington had transported 1.8 tons of enriched uranium out of Iraq for safekeeping more than a year after looters stole it from a U.N.-sealed facility left unguarded by U.S. troops.

Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said the uranium and about 1,000 highly radioactive items from the former Iraqi nuclear research facility had been taken to the United States.

"I can now announce that the United States Department of Defense (news - web sites) and Department of Energy (news - web sites) have completed a joint operation to secure and remove from Iraq radiological and nuclear materials that the ousted regime could have potentially used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program," Allawi said in a statement.

"Iraq has no intention and no will to resume these programs in the future. These materials which are potential weapons of mass murder are not welcome in our country and their production is unacceptable," Allawi said.

A "radiological dispersal device," or dirty bomb, uses a conventional explosive to disperse radioactive material over a wide area.

U.S. officials said lightly enriched uranium, which could be used in such a bomb, was airlifted to an undisclosed U.S. site after its removal from the Tuwaitha nuclear complex south of Baghdad, a one-time center of Iraq's nuclear weapons programs.

U.S. officials said the move would help keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.

The Tuwaitha nuclear complex was dismantled in the early 1990s after the first Gulf War (news - web sites).

But tons of nuclear materials remained there under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, until last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq when it was left unguarded and looted by Iraqi civilians.

The IAEA learned a week ago that the transfer had taken place on June 23, the agency said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council made public Wednesday.