RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Recent allegations by a dissident Iraqi scientist that Saddam Hussein's regime is constructing nuclear weapons using uranium supplied by Brazil during the early 1980s have led to the re-emergence of claims that the country smuggled large amounts of the material to Iraq in exchange for oil and nuclear weapons technology.
In an interview with The Times of London last week, Khidir Hamza -- who defected from Iraq in 1994 -- told the British newspaper that 1.3 tons of low-enriched material bought from Brazil was being processed for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
However, according to Brazil's Jornal da Tarde newspaper, which recently reprinted a 1990 expose entitled "The dark history of the relationship between Brazil and Iraq," Brazil sold three large shipments of uranium to Iraq in clandestine transactions.
An International Atomic Energy Agency report says that U.N. weapons inspectors, during a 1991-97 investigation into Iraq's nuclear capabilities, found some 27 tons of uranium originating from Brazil.
An investigation by Jornal da Tarde and its parent publication, Estado de Sao Paulo, claims that Brazil exported "dozens of tons" of uranium to Iraq between 1979 and 1990 in undocumented deals.
Brazil's National Commission of Nuclear Energy still maintains that any nuclear material sold by Brazil to Iraq during that time was powdered uranium dioxide, a raw material used for nuclear reactor fuel.
"That material -- which is not the same as the material known as 'yellow cake' (uranium freshly mined from the ground that cannot be used for nuclear weapons) -- was not smuggled," said a statement sent to United Press International.
"The chemical or physical form of the element is not the same as the element used to manufacture nuclear weapons.
"That uranium was under international safeguards of the IAEA, properly identified, catalogued and sealed, which can be confirmed by inspectors of the agency itself," the statement said.
An IAEA official told UPI from the organization's headquarters in Vienna that the statement was "valid" and that "what remains of the original Brazilian-sourced uranium is indeed stored at a facility in Iraq, which is under ongoing IAEA safeguards."
"That is, our inspectors visit annually to verify that the same quantity of material remains and that IAEA seals on the containers remain intact," said the official.
Despite the Brazilian nuclear commission's insistence that it engaged in no wrongdoing at the time, the Iraqi scientist's claim has rekindled interest in Brazil's former relationship with Iraq, now considered the next target for the U.S.-led war on terror.
Word of clandestine uranium shipments from Brazil to Iraq first surfaced in a 1981 report by Bernardo Kucinsky, a former correspondent for Britain's Guardian newspaper.
Now a professor of journalism at Sao Paulo University, Kucinsky told UPI that Brazil didn't really "smuggle" uranium to Iraq some 20 years ago. Rather, it engaged in "secret shipments without the knowledge of the Americans or international nuclear regulatory authorities."
Kucinsky recounted how in the '70s and '80s, Brazil's military regime forged an agreement with the Iraqi government, based on established relations regarding civilian work contracts granted to Brazilian companies.
That agreement, he said, would oblige Brazil to ship uranium to Iraq in exchange for a steady oil supply after the 1979 oil crisis.
"There was a strong possibility of oil from Iraq being interrupted," recalled Kucinsky. "In those days, the Brazilian state company (Petrobras) depended largely on Middle East oil Unlike the U.S. policy, Brazil didn't attempt to diversify its sources."
Because Brazil relied heavily on Middle Eastern oil (more than 70 percent of its imports came from that region), officials in the regime were "panicked at the time," said Kucinsky.
"They said that was the reason (for shipping uranium to Iraq); they wanted an exchange of two forms of energy," he recounted.
Authorities at the time stressed that Brazil could not supply enriched uranium to Iraq because it lacked the technological ability to transform the material into the weapons-ready variety.
It is a stance that Brazil maintains to this day. The nuclear agency's statement noted that "in order to produce a nuclear weapon, the uranium needs to be enriched, a complex technology that is mastered by a restricted group of countries."
Despite the denials, Kucinsky said that he believes Brazil's military dictators had an ulterior motive in the early '80s for forging a relationship with Iraq -- namely, the creation of the country's own nuclear weapons program.
Brazil was conducting what many then referred to as "parallel nuclear programs." One was an aboveboard financing of projects utilizing nuclear power as an energy source; another was the regime's unofficial pursuit of nuclear warheads.
"So it is possible that the agreement included also the exchange of nuclear information," said Kucinsky. "Brazil would get nuclear help from Iraq as oil in exchange for its uranium."
What aroused suspicions at the time that Brazil's relationship with Iraq wasn't what it appeared was the June 7, 1981, bombing by Israeli fighter jets of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak.
"This is what attracted attention to the whole issue," he said.
Twenty-one years later, a possible new clue to the exact nature of Brazilian-Iraqi ties is adding further credence to the theory that Brazil indeed sold weapons-ready uranium to Iraq in exchange for help in developing its own nuclear program.
Jornal da Tarde reported last week that about 40 Brazilian scientists were in the Osirak power plant during the 1981 Israeli bombing.
"This brings forth the suspicion that this agreement between Iraq and Brazil was not only in exchange for oil but also there was some sort of nuclear, scientific cooperation between the two countries to develop nuclear weapons," Kucinsky said.
While not an admission to collaborating with Iraq on nuclear weapons, a Brazilian nuclear commission official told UPI on condition of anonymity that during the 1980s, "Iraq was seen as just one more commercial partner." The official said that "Saddam was not at that time, the monster that he is today."
The Times interview with Hamza notes another possible clue tog the nature of Brazil-Iraq relations in the early 1980s.
Before leaving Iraq in 1998 -- just days before U.S.-led air strikes -- U.N. weapons inspectors had dismantled an illegally imported German centrifuge installation that had been used to refine progressively natural or low-enriched uranium until it became suitable for weapons, the Times reported.
German scientist Karl-Heinz Schaab -- who had been sought by German authorities since 1990 on charges of selling German uranium enrichment technology to Iraq before the Gulf War -- had spent time in Rio de Janeiro while eluding German authorities. He was captured returning to Germany and convicted of treason in 1999.
In March 1998, Brazil's Federal Supreme Court turned down an extradition request for Schaab, saying he was charged with a politically motivated crime, which meant that under Brazilian law, could not be extradited.
While the Hamza interview might have revived old memories of Brazil's one-time relationship with Iraq, some experts said they found his comments on Brazilian uranium exports misleading.
David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said that there is no evidence that the non-enriched uranium sold by Brazil is being used for nuclear weapons development in Iraq, as indicated by Hamza's remarks to The Times.
"What we understand from our own work is that it's inspected every year because it's under the non-proliferation treaty," said Albright, referring to the 1968 U.N. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that now includes 187 countries -- including Iraq.
"It was all there, last inspection, though there are worries that if there's war, Iraq may divert it."
What also concerns Albright is the seemingly arbitrary singling out of Brazilian uranium by Hamza as the alleged material used for suspected weapons development.
According to IAEA data, several nations -- including Italy, Nigeria and Portugal -- sold uranium of varying levels of enrichment to Iraq, some in quantities greater than Brazil.
And France and Russia sold relatively small amounts -- 50 kilograms -- of highly enriched, weapons-ready uranium to Iraq during the same period.
Iraq could use Brazilian uranium in weapons of mass destruction if it had the time and technology to complete the sophisticated process of enriching the material, said Albright.
"There is some uncertainty about what Iraq has, but most people view that it is a problem of the future -- that Iraq could build a uranium-enrichment plant ... if it was under pressure it may use the uranium from Brazil or other places," he said, noting the process would take "several years."
"This thing that Hamza caused is inexcusable," said an irate Albright, who in conversation with UPI railed against the Iraqi scientist's allegations.
He called them "speculative" and "misleading" on several occasions and added: "You can quote me on that."
