By DPA,
Vienna : Another dark chapter of Libya’s contentious relations with the world community was closed Friday, as the UN nuclear watchdog said all outstanding issues on Tripoli’s past nuclear weapons programme had been solved.
After British and US intelligence seized a nuclear technology shipment to Libya in October 2003, the country stopped its nuclear programme.
Since then, it has been gradually revealed that from the 1980s, Libya had secretly acquired technology and information for building nuclear weapons, including a blueprint for a nuclear warhead.
In a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sent to agency board members Friday, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei wrote that “the issues that had been reported to the Board of Governors are no longer outstanding at this stage”.
IAEA inspections in Libya would be conducted “as a routine matter” from now on, ElBaradei wrote.
But the confidential report, which was obtained by DPA, also showed that the north African country had obtained blueprints for a nuclear re-processing plant capable of making 10 kg of plutonium per year. The nuclear bomb that the US dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 contained 6.1 kg of plutonium.
It also revealed that the nuclear smuggling network set up by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan started working with Libya ten years earlier than previously believed.
In the mid- to late 1980s, Libya acquired microfiche files with German-origin design information for the re-processing plant, according to the IAEA document.
The files also contained information for building facilities for making nuclear fuel, and for dealing with waste from re-processing.
The IAEA noted, however, that agency inspectors had not found any facilities related to the blueprints, and that some key technical information was missing from the documents.
The nuclear weapons programme set up under the leadership of Muamar Gaddafi was aided by an international network of traders and scientist in which Abdul Qadeer Khan played a pivotal role.
The IAEA report said that Khan’s relations to the north African country started already in 1984, and not in the mid-1990s, as Libya had stated earlier.
The network, which included players from Pakistan, Germany, Switzerland, Malaysia, South Africa and other countries, provided Libya with a blueprint for a nuclear warhead.
However, “the Agency did not find any indications of actual work related to nuclear weapons development,” ElBaradei wrote.
A similar document has been found in Iran, but the report said that the Libyan documents were “more up-to-date”. Tehran insists that it has received its nuclear-weapons-related files without having asked for them, and that it has never used the information.
In an apparent nod to Iran’s hesitant cooperation with the IAEA in clearing up its nuclear history, the report noted that “Libya has also provided the agency unrestricted and prompt access,” beyond the requirements of its inspection agreements with the UN nuclear agency.
Libya’s nuclear programme started in in 1973 as a scientific endeavour.
Since the 1980s, the country bought technology and materials for all stages of the nuclear cycle, including a facility from Japan that processes uranium ore, technology from the Khan network to enrich uranium, German-origin blueprints for the plutonium facility, and the weapons blueprints.
Chemical analysis of uranium particles found in Libya has proved that equipment for uranium enrichment had been provided by or through Pakistan, the IAEA document shows.
The IAEA report comes at a time when Libya is mending its relations with the US and other western countries.
On Sep 6, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi formally ended a half century of hostility as Washington’s chief diplomat became the highest ranking US official to visit Tripoli since 1957.
Libya has also agreed to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate the families of those who died in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the two US soldiers killed in the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco.
Last December, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Gaddafi agreed on business deals worth more than 10 billion euros ($14 billion) and an accord of cooperation on the peaceful use of nuclear energy by Libya.