Irak, Medio Oriente y Asia

Inspectores de Armas de la ONU echan un primer vistazo en Libia

Autor: The Associated Press

Fecha: 28/12/2003

Traductor: Celeste Murillo, especial para P.I.

Fuente: New York Times

U.N. Arms Inspectors Get First Look at Libyan Sites

Libya on Sunday let United Nations nuclear officials inspect four sites related to its nuclear weapons program, all previously secret.

The visits, led by the chief United Nations weapons inspector, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, followed the surprise announcement by the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, more than a week ago that his country would abandon its pursuit of unconventional weapons.

Dr. ElBaradei, head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, visited the four nuclear sites here in Tripoli, the capital, accompanied by a team of his inspectors.

Dr. ElBaradei spent several hours touring the sites, said his spokesman, Mark Gwozdecky. He described the sites as new facilities that "have never been mentioned in the media before." No further details were given on the sites or about what the inspection teams discovered.

As a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Libya is required to declare all sensitive nuclear installations to the United Nations.

On arriving in Libya on Saturday, Dr. ElBaradei said the country appeared to be far from producing nuclear arms.

Mr. Gwozdecky said Dr. ElBaradei would meet with Matouq Muhammad Matouq, a Libyan deputy prime minister and head of the country's nuclear program, to develop a plan for future inspections. Some of the inspectors also met with Libyan officials on "technical matters" concerning the history of Libya's weapons program, Mr. Gwozdecky said. Dr. ElBaradei did not take part in this meeting, he said.

Dr. ElBaradei is also expected to meet with Libya's prime minister and foreign minister on Monday before returning to Vienna.

Mr. Gwozdecky said some inspectors would remain in Libya until Thursday to visit other sites.

Colonel Qaddafi's pledge to scrap Libya's weapons programs is the latest in a series of moves to end the country's international isolation and shed its image as a rogue nation. It followed eight months of covert negotiations and inspections by British and American intelligence officials.

Libya, long on the United States list of countries that sponsor terrorism, has portrayed the move as a strategic step, insisting it never produced any unconventional weapons. "We didn't arrive to the point of weaponization," Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, the foreign minister, said Saturday at a news conference.

Mr. Shalqam reaffirmed that Libya was committed to full transparency and would sign a protocol allowing wide-ranging inspections on short notice, promises that Colonel Qaddafi made during his announcement more than a week ago.

Colonel Qaddafi said he hoped Libya's action would press Israel to disarm. Israel, the only Middle East nation believed to possess nuclear weapons, refuses to confirm or deny a program for them.

Dr. ElBaradei praised Libya's new openness as a step in the right direction, "particularly in the Middle East."

"This protocol is not meant to be a threat to a country's national security or dignity but an objective tool to give assurance that the activities are for peaceful means," he said.

Mr. Shalqam said the government had started to discuss dismantling Libya's weapons program about four years ago.

The International Atomic Energy Agency was sidelined during the covert American-British talks that led to the disclosure by Libya that it had a 15-year-old nuclear weapons program.

Diplomats who declined to be identified said the agency now had access to American and British intelligence, but Dr. ElBaradei acknowledged on Saturday that his team was nonetheless going in knowing relatively little.
Dr. ElBaradei said Libya had received its weapons equipment "through the black market and middle people."

On the Vienna-to-Amsterdam leg of his flight to the Libyan capital, he said the Libyans had "tried to develop an enrichment capability" for uranium, apparently as part of a nascent weapons program that was later abandoned.

The United Nations lifted sanctions against Libya after it accepted responsibility in September for the bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 and agreed to pay $2.7 billion to the victims' families.

The United States imposed sanctions against Libya in 1986, asserting that it supported terrorist groups. The embargoes by Washington continue, but it hinted at improved economic relations after Colonel Qaddafi's weapons pledge.