Experts from the International Atomic Agency have provisionally rejected claims made by the Bush Administration that Iraq attempted to use metal tubes to make centrifuges.
Atomic agency challenges Bush’s key claim against Iraq](http://www.iht.com/articles/83026.html) International Herald Tribune (Excerpt) 11 Jan 03
WASHINGTON The key piece of evidence that President George W. Bush has cited as proof that Saddam Hussein has sought to revive his program to make nuclear weapons has been challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in September, Bush cited Iraq’s attempts to buy special aluminum tubes as proof that Baghdad was seeking to construct a centrifuge network system to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. “Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon,” Bush said.
But Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, offered a sharply different assessment in a report to the UN Security Council. ElBaradei said Iraqi officials had claimed that they sought the tubes to make 81-mm rockets. ElBaradei indicated that he thought the Iraqi claim was credible.
"While the matter is still under investigation and further verification is foreseen, the IAEA’s analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets," the agency said in its report. “While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it.” …
Iraq’s attempt to buy aluminum tubes “was the key piece of evidence to support the assessment that Iraq was pursuing or trying to revive its gas centrifuge program,” said Gary Samore, director of studies for the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the senior proliferation official on former President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council. As a result of the agency’s report, he added, “this particular piece of evidence is now much more ambiguous.”
Even back in Sep 2002, the Bush Administrations claims against Iraq were rejected by the International Atomic Agency..
Agency disavows report on Iraq arms](VOA - Voice of America English News) VOA News (Excerpt) 27 Sep 02
The International Atomic Energy Agency says that a report cited by President Bush as evidence that Iraq in 1998 was “six months away” from developing a nuclear weapon does not exist “There’s never been a report like that issued from this agency,” Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA’s chief spokesman, said yesterday in a telephone interview from the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria
“We’ve never put a time frame on how long it might take Iraq to construct a nuclear weapon in 1998,” said the spokesman of the agency charged with assessing Iraq’s nuclear capability for the United Nations. In a Sept. 7 news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr. Bush said: "I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied — finally denied access [in 1998], a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon.“I don’t know what more evidence we need,” said the president, defending his administration’s case that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction.
The White House says Mr. Bush was referring to an earlier IAEA report “He’s referring to 1991 there,” said Deputy Press Secretary Scott McClellan. “In '91, there was a report saying that after the war they found out they were about six months away.” Mr. Gwozdecky said no such report was ever issued by the IAEA in 1991.
Many news agencies — including The Washington Times — reported Mr. Bush’s Sept. 7 comments as referring to a 1998 IAEA report. The White House did not ask for a correction from The Times. To clear up the confusion, Mr. McClellan cited two news articles from 1991 — a July 16 story in the London Times by Michael Evans and a July 18 story in the New York Times by Paul Lewis. But neither article cites an IAEA report on Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program or states that Saddam was only six months away from “developing a weapon” — as claimed by Mr. Bush. ..
In October 1998, just before Saddam kicked U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq, the IAEA laid out a case opposite of Mr. Bush’s Sept. 7 declaration. “There are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance,” IAEA Director-General Mohammed Elbaradei wrote in a report to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.