Nuclear Expert Says International Inspection Agency Could Not Have Detected an Iraqi Plutonium Switc

A 33-year-old nuclear engineer who is the only American inspector in the Middle East section of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Friday the IAEA could not have detected a diversion by Iraq of plutonium from its nuclear reactor to build an atomic weapon.

Roger Richter who resigned from the agency Tuesday, said Iraq could have “thwarted the IAEA inspection.” He said he disagreed with Sigmund Eklund of Sweden, head of the IAEA, who reported to the agency’s Board of Governor’s in Vienna last week that the IAEA could have detected a diversion.

Richter testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is investigating whether Israel acted in self-defense when it destroyed the Iraqi reactor on June 7. Senator Alan Cranston (D. Cal.) said Richter was a man of “conscience,” who called him on June 12 from Vienna because he was concerned about the Iraqi nuclear program.

In Iraq, Richter said the IAEA inspectors were limited to checking only the equipment and material declared by France and Iraq to the IAEA. He said the inspectors would not be permitted to look at the “hot cells” provided by Italy or other material which he said Iraq could use to make nuclear weapons. He said Iraq would have been able to make a weapon in about three years.

Richter noted that clandestine material can easily be moved before an inspector arrives from the IAEA headquarters. He noted that before an inspector can go to a country, he must obtain a visa so that none of his trips can be unannounced. In addition, Richter said that since 1976 only Hungarian and Soviet nationals have been allowed in Iraq as inspectors. He added that a French national was approved in January, but he has not made any inspections as yet.

Doctor Herbert Kounts, chairman of the Nuclear Energy Department at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, said that even if the inspector could not check other materials, there were always “tell-tale” signs if nuclear weapons were be-

ing built. Kounts also said that if Iraq wanted to produce nuclear weapons, there were more sophisticated reactors than the one France was building for them. Richter said that Iraq wanted the more advanced reactors but France would not sell it to them.

Kounts and Dr. Robert Selden of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, said if the reactor had been operational when Israel bombed it, the radiation effect would only have been for about 1,000 yards around the area and Baghdad would not have been endangered. Premier Menachem Begin had said that Israel acted when it did because if it waited until the reactor became operational, it would have cost thousands of lives in Baghdad.

Richter said that while he was with the IAEA, he knew nothing about the French-Iraqi secret agreement which was revealed this week and which was claimed to be a safeguard against the development of nuclear weapons in Iraq. Senator Paul Sarbanes (D. Md.) asked why France and Iraq had kept it secret since he noted no one knew about it and thus the agreement could not reassure anyone.