The United States appears to be taking a wait-and-see attitude about reports that the Soviet Union planned to supply Iraq with a nuclear reactor to replace the one destroyed by an Israeli air raid on June 7, 1981.
“We understand that the contemplated project merely involves a very preliminary feasibility and siting study for the possible future construction of a nuclear power reactor by the Soviet Union for the generation of electricity in Iraq,” State Department deputy spokesman Alan Romberg said Friday.
Romberg noted there was no contract as yet for the actual supplying of the reactor. He said if an agreemen was reached, it would be eight to 10 years before the reactor could be operational.
However, Romberg stressed that it was “significant that both the Soviet Union and Iraq are parties to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty under which they are committed to placing international safeguards inspections on any power reactors exported to Iraq as well as all other nuclear facilities in that country.”
Romberg said that these safeguards must be approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna on whose Board of Governors the United States is a permanent member. He added that the USSR “adheres to international nuclear supplier guidelines which require it to assure the peaceful purpose of its nuclear exports through application of safeguards and other measures.”
Israel justified its raid on the ground that the French supplied Iraqi reactor was intended to produce atomic weapons and would have been operational soon, after which it could not have been bombed without exposing Baghdad to massive radiation fallout. The raid resulted in serious differences between the Reagan Administration and Israel, with the United States holding up shipments of F-16 aircraft.
At the same time, testimony in Congress charged that the IAEA inspections did not adequately safeguard against nuclear reactors being used for non-peaceful purposes.
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