Disarmament: How to Hide an A-Bomb

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

From outside the Abu Gharib barracks near Baghdad, inspectors for the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency could see what one member called "frenzied activity": trucks, cranes and forklifts moving out heavy, draped objects. But Iraqi soldiers would not let them in until three days later. By then, said Hans Blix, head of the IAEA, there was "no longer any trace of the activities and objects" his people had seen before.

But there is not much doubt about what the Iraqis were doing. They were playing an exasperating, and dangerous, shell game with calutrons, which are World War II-era devices to enrich uranium so that it can produce a nuclear explosive. The IAEA concluded after a May inspection that calutrons had been present and then removed from a nuclear site in Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad. U.S. intelligence tracked the calutrons to the barracks and then to the Al Fallujah facility west of Baghdad, where the U.N. inspectors went last Friday -- only to find once again trucks carting equipment away. Several inspectors followed the 60-truck convoy in their car, taking pictures until Iraqi soldiers fired shots in the air to chase them away.

The U.N. Security Council denounced the incident as a violation of the cease-fire agreement that ended the gulf war, and George Bush thundered, "We can't permit this brutal bully ((Saddam Hussein)) to go back on this solemn agreement." In theory, the U.S. and its allies could resume air attacks if Saddam does not turn over the calutrons and any other bombmaking gear for destruction, as the cease-fire resolution commands. At minimum, they will continue the trade embargo that is strangling the Iraqi economy.

However that comes out, the contretemps spotlights a broader problem: only the unprecedented rights to prowl everywhere and look at anything in the country that the U.N. gained because of the cease-fire have enabled it to expose Saddam's cheating. If Iraq had to contend with just the regular inspections of known nuclear facilities, required by the 1970 nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which it signed, it might be well on the way to reviving a bomb-building program that allied bombing was intended to interrupt. As recently as last November, IAEA inspectors toured the nuclear facilities Baghdad acknowledged possessing and found Iraq to be -- apparently -- in complete compliance.

Other countries seem to be getting away with bomb-building programs outside the treaty. All nations party to the pact, as 142 now are, must agree with the IAEA on terms for inspection of all their nuclear facilities. But North Korea, which signed the treaty in 1985, has never concluded a full-scope inspection pact, and South Korean President Roh Tae Woo charged last week that Pyongyang has tested nuclear detonators. South Africa, widely believed to have the Bomb, announced last week its intention to sign the treaty and will now have to open its facilities to inspection. Countries that do not sign the treaty on occasion agree to have the U.N. group monitor some of their nuclear plants. Israel, India and Pakistan are all in this category, but they nonetheless are believed to have secret weapons programs under way.

It is not because the inspectors have been lax. They employ an impressive array of mechanisms to make sure that materials used to generate nuclear power or for other peaceful purposes are not diverted to bomb development. In 21 years, the inspectors, who lately have run more than 2,000 inspections a year, have never found even a single case of material diverted from peaceful use.

But the inspectors can visit only those facilities they know about. The way to start a successful bomb-building program is simply to carry it on at highly secret sites completely separate from all publicly known power-generation or research activities. The IAEA does have a theoretical right to conduct "special inspections" of undeclared plants but only if another member country supplies intelligence information indicating that such a nuclear facility exists -- and until the gulf-war cease-fire that had never happened. Says David Kyd, IAEA director of information: "If someone wants to engage in clandestine activity, they're gonna do it." A move will soon be made, however, to amend the treaty to make such "challenge" inspections mandatory and not voluntary, as they are now.

The problems of detecting and stopping production of chemical and biological weapons are even worse. The U.N. is supposed to do both in Iraq, and biological weapons are already banned by a 1975 convention. At present there are no verification measures, however, and it is hard to see how any could be made to work. Bacteriological weapons can be produced in very small labs that are easy to hide.

Thirty-nine nations are negotiating in Geneva to draft a treaty banning production, use or stockpiling of chemical weapons. But verification will probably be frustrating. Chemical weapons are ridiculously easy to make; even a chemical used in ink for ball-point pens can readily be treated to form mustard gas. Verification proposals include "black box" sensors installed at chemical plants to analyze randomly what is being produced; another idea is to aim laser infrared radars at smokestack plumes. While such techniques would not be perfect, says a U.S. official, "chemical weapons are so difficult to control that any slowing down of the train is valuable." The same could be said of nukes. Although it has prevented diversion of materials from peaceful uses, the IAEA hasn't solved a tougher challenge: keeping book on the secret bombmakers.

With reporting by Jay Peterzell/Vienna