War nears as Iraqi nuclear bomb papers are found

WAR against Iraq loomed closer last night as United Nations weapons inspectors revealed that they had found documents in Baghdad detailing how to make a key component of nuclear weapons.

The documents, running to 3,000 pages, suggest that Iraqi scientists may have been involved in trying to produce enriched uranium - an essential step in creating nuclear bombs. Documents removed from the home of a leading scientist in Baghdad showed he had been working on a process in the 1980s which involved the use of lasers to enrich uranium.

The research could amount to a breach of UN resolutions preventing Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction and provide a trigger for war.

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If conflict begins, most forces personnel who would fight in the Gulf would do so without any protection against a chemical attack. Scotland on Sunday can reveal that more than half of all British troops have refused the controversial anthrax vaccine because they fear the side-effects on their health more than the risk of germ warfare.

Meanwhile, protesters were last night preparing for further confrontation with police after thousands in Britain and across the world took part in a day of campaigning against a war in Iraq. Demonstrators in Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, Cardiff and Bradford, turned out in force to speak out against war. Massive demonstrations were also held in Washington and other American cities, as well as in Japan, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Russia, France, Britain, Argentina and Mexico.

Yesterday UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix warned Iraq that it must step up co-operation with his inspection teams if it wants to avert the threat of war.

On the eve of crucial talks with key Iraqi officials in Baghdad, Dr Blix said he would be using his meeting to impress upon the regime the "seriousness of the situation" they were now facing.

Arriving in Cyprus from London, having briefed Tony Blair on Friday, Dr Blix said that the Iraqis still had not made a full declaration of its nuclear, biological and chemical programmes.

"We are going to have a long discussion with them about several items. We will impress upon them the seriousness of the situation," he said. "There has not been sufficient co-operation. They need to have a sincere and genuine co-operation."

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said the UN inspectors did not need to find a "smoking gun" to prove Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction.

He said it could be enough for them simply to obtain "persuasive evidence" that Saddam Hussein still has nuclear, biological or chemicals weapons to warrant military strikes by Britain and the US.

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Hoon added: "Clearly we believe there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We would expect Hans Blix and his team to discover indications of them - a shell or a missile or something clearly prohibited, or documentary evidence.

"It’s not literally a smoking gun. It is persuasive evidence that confirms what we believe to be the case - that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Speaking after the documents were seized in Baghdad, the head of the UN nuclear control agency said the papers discovered at the home of an Iraqi scientist appeared to outline hi-tech attempts to enrich uranium in the 1980s.

Senior experts in the UN agency had said the enrichment method - which could be used to make nuclear weapons - proved too sophisticated for the Iraqis to exploit at the time.

UN nuclear chief Mohamed El-Baradei, who oversees the UN review of Iraq’s nuclear programme, said the research outlined in the documents had "something to do with laser enrichment."

El-Baradei said the real issue would be whether the Iraqis had included the information found in the documents in the 12,000-page declaration submitted to the United Nations last month. Referring to repeated demands from the US and Britain for more co-operation and openness from Iraq, he said: "If it’s something we did not know about, it obviously doesn’t show the transparency we’ve been preaching."

The documents were found on Thursday by UN inspectors in the home of physicist Faleh Hassan, 55, once associated with his government’s nuclear project.

Last night Hassan said Iraq cancelled its laser enrichment research programme in 1988 and he never worked on that project, adding that the entire experiment with laser isotope enrichment was declared to the United Nations in 1991.

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He said: "I worked for the Nuclear Energy Agency, which was separate from the [enrichment] programme.

"I can go over the documents with Mr El-Baradei page by page, line by line and even word by word to prove that everything they found is in alignment with what we declared in 1991."