The International Atomic Energy Agency reiterated Thursday that roughly 328.5 tonnes of powerful explosives had gone missing from the Al-Qaqaa depot in Iraq sometime after April 2003, pushing back against a US television report suggesting the true figure could be as low as three tonnes.
The missing material, originally verified by inspectors in January 2003, included 195 tonnes of HMX, a substance serious enough to serve as a nuclear-weapon trigger. Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said officials had alerted American authorities to security concerns at Al-Qaqaa after looting broke out at a separate nuclear facility near Baghdad.
The controversy has sharpened during the US presidential race, with Democratic candidate John Kerry citing the episode as evidence of mismanagement in post-invasion Iraq.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in October 2004, in its own words.