MoD Information

Iraq dossier under scrutiny in Vienna

Mon, December 09, 2002

Source: Ananova

Iraq's arms declaration has been handed over to the UN nuclear agency in Austria.

Iraq dossier under scrutiny in Vienna

Iraq's arms declaration has been handed over to the UN nuclear agency in Austria.  The agency will undertake a lengthy and painstaking analysis to check Saddam Hussein's claims he has no atomic weapons or programmes to develop them. 

A senior UN nuclear weapons inspector accompanied a copy of the 12,000-page declaration to Vienna, headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency.  The agency is heading the hunt for nuclear arms in Iraq and the long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering warheads to distant targets. 

The documents arrived in Vienna via Cyprus a day after the Iraqi government turned over three sets to UN officials in Baghdad as required by the latest Security Council resolution.  That resolution gave Iraq until today to detail its weapons programmes and stockpiles. Iraq insists it has none. 

The other two copies - one for the council, the other for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission overseeing the search for biological and chemical agents - are being flown to UN headquarters in New York.