UN inspectors investigating undeclared nuclear activity in Egypt that could be related to atomic weapons development are checking out a reprocessing lab for making plutonium, diplomats said. The lab, apparently put together in the 1980s but never used, raises questions about an Egyptian nuclear programme which is peaceful but may also be carefully structured to be able to move towards weapons development if Cairo decided to take this step, diplomats said in recent comments.
"It's not empty, the Egyptian story," a diplomat close to the UN's nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency told AFP commenting on the ongoing investigation and hinting there are more undeclared activities than inspectors of the Vienna-based IAEA had originally thought.
But the diplomat, who asked not to be named, said Egypt's undeclared work was small scale and not even comparable to South Korea, a non-atomic-weapons state which has admitted to carrying out rogue nuclear experiments.
A second diplomat said the main question with Egypt is not what it is hiding but the range of its nuclear activities, in a country that is a regional power concerned about alleged nuclear weapons programmes in Israel and Iran. "Egypt is building a physical and manpower infrastructure which, added to past know-how and experience, enable it to master an important part of the nuclear fuel cycle technology.
"This infrastructure could be used to promote a military nuclear programme," the diplomat said.
A third diplomat played this down, however, saying the Egyptian installations are "rundown, dirty, dilapidated."
The IAEA has been intensively investigating Egypt since the middle of 2004 after it was tipped off to possible undeclared nuclear experiments, with much information coming from open-source scientific publications by Egyptian scientists, one diplomat said.
The experiments the IAEA is looking into involve making uranium metal, which could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium, and carrying out the first steps of uranium enrichment by making uranium tetrafluoride (UF4), one diplomat said.
An IAEA mission in late December brought back a mass of data, including swipes made at locations to find radiation or particles indicating sensitive nuclear work.
This data is currently being evaluated with IAEA officials saying that the agency's 35-nation board of governors will be notified only if there are significant findings.
The IAEA is empowered by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to insure that atomic materials are not being diverted away from peaceful use in countries which have ratified the NPT, as Egypt did in 1981. NPT states are required to disclose all their nuclear-material-related activities to the IAEA.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit earlier this month denied that his country had done anything counter to NPT.
A diplomat close to the IAEA said no uranium was actually enriched, referring to the process that makes nuclear fuel but can also make the explosive core of atomic bombs.
The reprocessing laboratory is at Egypt's Inshass center, 35 kilometres (20 miles) north-east of Cairo, where there are two research reactors.
The lab consists of "hot laboratories, procured from France in the early 1980s, which allow for treatment of spent fuel and laboratory-scale plutonium separation," a diplomat said.
Non-proliferation expert David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), said the IAEA will have to answer the question: "Is this reprocessing lab ever going to operate. Is it going to separate plutonium in the future?"
"It is time to lay out what Egypt has got. For years people have wondered about Egypt," Albright said, saying there was a gap between statements by Egyptian leaders about readiness to develop nuclear weapons if necessary and Egypt's strict adherence to international safeguards under the NPT.
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