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'It should not be just simply the right of every country to develop weapon usable material', IAEA Director Dr Mohamed ElBaradei interview with CNN, December 29

'What Is Being Found in Libya?' excerpts from a CNN Transcript, December 29, 2003.

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR (voice-over): The United Nations nuclear chief praises Libya for cooperating with nuclear weapons inspections. But there have also been some surprises. On this edition of Q&A, what is being found in Libya?

VERJEE: Welcome to Q&A. No end to the surprises from Libya. First, the announcement that they would suspend any weapons of mass destruction programs. And now the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency says he has found some eye opening information... let's here some of what IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told CNN's Andrea Koppel...

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Is where did they get the centrifuge technology from? Where did they get some of the uranium? Did you get any answers?

MOHAMED ELBARADEI, CHIEF WEAPONS INSPECTOR, UNITED NATIONS: We got some answers. I'm not in a position to reveal this piece of information because we still have a lot of work to do to go after the suppliers, to verify the statement we got here with the source of supply. But this is a very serious, very serious issue, Andrea, you know, the export control regime, whether it works or does not work. We have seen in Iran, we have seen in Libya that export control is still pretty loose. And I think there is a lot of soul searching, frankly, which one will have to do based on our experience in Iran, in Libya, in terms of authority. We need agency authority.

We need additional protocol, which should be part of any investigation to detect early on any effort to develop nuclear capability. The export controls clearly need to be strengthened in many different ways. And as I have been saying for a while now we need to have better control on this part of the fuel cycle, the ability to produce highly enriched uranium or plutonium. I have been advocating that this should really be under multinational control. It should not be just simply the right of every country to develop weapon usable material, so a lot of work for us. It is an eye opener in this last year, clearly, I mean, in the area of nonproliferation. And we need to put our heads together and see how we can better strengthen the nonproliferation regime.

KOPPEL: Well, correct me if I am wrong, but the only reason that export controls would be relevant would be if a country had signed an export control. There is what we heard you saying the other evening was that these were middlemen that were operating in a black market.

ELBARADEI: Sure.

KOPPEL: So do you think that there were actually countries involved?

ELBARADEI: Well, but even a country should have control over the middlemen, over the black market. No, I think in most cases so far countries did not know about this black market middlemen transaction, but that is a great loophole, a big loophole. We need to make sure that countries tighten the national control over the export of sensitive technology. It is an eye opener to see how much material has been going from one country to the other, you know, the extent of the black market network. And this is something we clearly need to put a clamp on...

KOPPEL: Now that you have visited four of these previously undisclosed sites do you still believe that it was the nascent stage?

ELBARADEI: So far, Andrea, yes. I think we have visited a number of facilities where they had been working on an enrichment program. But the program is very much at an early stage of development where it is right now quite dismantled, in fact. It is all in boxes. And they were far away from having a industrial scale enrichment capability. And I think again there is a conversion part of the enrichment. They still were far away from having an online production if you like. So, yes, so far, you know, we believe it was at an early stage of development, the capability to enrich uranium.

And we are now working with them to neutralize any activities in a program that could have led into a nuclear weapon. But luckily I think we are here when they have not developed a full fledged capability. And, luckily, also they have announced that they are ready to eliminate all programs of weapons relevant to weapons of mass destruction, which I think is a very good step in the right direction.

KOPPEL: Before you arrived there were unnamed American officials who were quoting as saying that Libya's nuclear program was more advanced and they were surprised by that than what they had expected. How did that square with your assessment. Is it just the glass being half full or half empty?

ELBARADEI: I do not know what was there expectation, you know, when they came here. But maybe they did not expect Libya to have any enrichment capability at all. That is not true. Libya has centrifuges in the country which could have, you know, expanded to have a full scale facility to develop enrichment. But that is not the case yet. We also, I know I should say that having highly enriched uranium, for example, or plutonium does not mean that you have a weapon. It is quite difficult to develop a component of a weapon. And that also we still have to verify that Libya has not done any work on the organization aspect of a weapon. So they haven't enriched uranium. They don't have the facility yet to produce that uranium. And they haven't done any work on the military aspect of converting nuclear material into a weapon. So I still believe that it is at a very early stage.

KOPPEL: So how long would you estimate what Libya would need before if it hadn't made public its program, before it had nuclear weapons?

ELBARADEI: It is very difficult, it is very dangerous to estimate, Andrea. But I think my experts tell me it is a question of years. It is not a question of months for sure.

KOPPEL: But years because I had spoken to knowledgeable Libyan serves (ph) who said they were about five years away, would you estimate is that in the ballpark or ...

ELBARADEI: I would say in the ballpark, maybe a year or two less, maybe a year or two more. But it is a difficult process and you are never sure that you have a weapon until you have a weapon. We have seen the experience in Iraq before the war. They experiment a lot with developing nuclear weapons. They had a lot of problems, technical problems. And it is not an easy task, either to develop highly enriched uranium or to convert it into a weapon.

KOPPEL: But, again, there are so many factors involved before one can say for certainty, you know, this is the timeline. My gut feeling is on expert advice, preliminary expert advice but they were years away from having a weapon.

ELBARADEI: Yesterday, you saw some of the uranium centrifuge technology. How many did you see? Do you have any idea ballpark how many they have? And have they created any cascades whatsoever which could be used then to produce the fissile material?

KOPPEL: Well, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) cascade, which I think of in terms of centrifuges which were developed I think two or three years ago, as a pilot, you know, as a laboratory scale type of cascade. That has been dismantled now. They haven't really developed as I said industrial or large-scale cascade to develop the uranium. So there were still at the experimental phase...

Source: CNN.com, http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0312/29/i_qaa.02.html.

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