Bombed reactor is an Iraqi “national shame”

Press, 4 August 1981, Page 16

Bombed reactor is an Iraqi “national shame”

By

STUART McMILLAN,

who was recently in Bagdad.

Most of the several hundred journalists in Bagdad last month apparently wanted to see the nuclear reactor which had been bombed by the Israelis barely a month before. Almost as predictably, the Iraqis did not turn on a trip for us to see what. they regarded as their national shame.

However, by accident, the site was seen some 12 to 15 kilometres outside Bagdad on another trip. The area was surrounded by barrage balloons (put up after the raid). Little was to be seen because of high surrounding mounds. The Iraqis on the bus discouraged the taking of photographs and on the way back an Iraqi Information Ministry official drew the blinds of the bus on the pretext that the driver wanted it that way so that the air conditioning would work properly. He reluctantly gave in on the point that an Australian and I made that we had been brought to Iraq to see Iraq and did not want our blind down.

The following account of the raid and the circumstances associated with it came from various sources, including technical workers and other observers.

The Israeli raid was astonishingly accurate. It hit precisely the central core of the rpactor, effectively rendering the reactor useless and possibly making it impossible

to rebuild on the same site. The raid left untouched many other facilities, including four laboratories being built by ■ Italians.

There are no underground facilities designed to produce nuclear weapons. iVlr Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that there wer He varied the depth under ground of such facilities. There are none.

It would take a large number of years to accumulate the weapons-grade material from the reactor to make a nuclear bomb. As with other reactors the possibility exists, but certainly not in the short term. The reactor was designed to produce electricity. Demand exceeds supply for electricity in Iraq. There are electricity failures. Demand is high partly because of the need for airconditioning. Some development of electricity generation is needed. Whether this needs to be done by a nuclear reactor in a country with so much oil is another question. The Iraqi Government has been humiliated by the raid. This probably accounts for the mild response it made. Internally there are reports that long’ after the Israelis had bombed the reactor and departed, a barrage of anti-air-craft fire was kept up. This was seen as intended to demonstrate to the people of Bagdad that the Government could act against an aggressor.

Externally there was some criticism by other Arab countries that the much-vaunted Iraqi armed services had allowed a non-adjacent enemy to invade its air space, bomb an expensive prestige project, and escape unscathed.

The fact that the Israelis appeared to be able to carry out their raid without detection seems astonishing. There are two accounts suggesting that they were detected. One is of an Iraqi soldier who reported that Israeli jets were flying towards Bagdad. He is reported to have been told that he must be mistaken. Another account is that French technicians repairing a radar set had picked up blips and reported them but were told to mind their own business. A clue to how such mistakes could have occurred may be provided by a story put forward at the time of the raid. Much was made of the point that the Israeli jets went south and attacked Iraq from the direction of Saudi Arabia. While this may be true it serves as something of a blind. Israeli jets regularly fly over Lebanon and Jordan and even over parts of Iraq. Israel does not want to admit this pubblicly — nor do the Arab countries. Thus the sighting and the blips may not have had the importance attached to them that might have been expected.