Belgian economist Hugues Leclercq has dismissed the claims
contained in Prime Minister Tony Blair's "Dossier
of evividence agaisnt Saddam", and presented to the
British House of Commons that Iraq tried to purchase "significant"
quantities of African uranium as a mere "fantasy".
Professor Leclercq, a well known academic from the Roman
Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and specialist
of the Democratic Republic of Congo's economy and mining
sector, said British accusations amounted to "pure
fantasy" if not "intoxication", since no
evidence was provided and no country was mentioned.
"I'm sure that not a single UN inspector can believe
this," Leclercq told New African.
Apart from Gabon which stopped mining uranium ore two
years ago and the Central African Republic whose uranium
deposits have not been exploited yet, other sources uranium
in Africa include Namibia, which is ironically being mined
by Rio Tinto, a British multinational; Niger where the
French have the stakes in the country's two uranium mining
companies; and South Africa which has signed the nuclear
non proliferation treaty.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is eventually another
source of uranium whose ore was used to make the atomic
bomb which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
It was extracted during World War II from the Chinkolobwe
mine in mineral-rich Katanga province. 1,140 tons of Congolese
uranium ore were then shipped to America via Belgium (Congo
was then a Belgian colony), supplied by the Union Minière
du Haut Katanga. The mine was completely flooded afterwards,
making the left over ore completely inaccessible.
Leclerq explained: "Congo has ceased to be the first
world producer of uranium since 1955 far before its independence.
It is also signatory to the Non-proliferation of Nuclear
weapons Treaty. There might be some uranium ore in the
caves around, but even assuming a trafficker finds some,
he will have problems to sell it. Indeed, the fabrication
of plutonium 239 used for nuclear bombs or as fuel for
a power station is a long process."
"In the past, the Congolese ore was processed at
Hoboken in Belgium where it was first transformed in uranium
235, which still cannot be used for military purpose.
It is only at a later stage after its transformation in
uranium 238, that it can be enriched into plutonium,"
said the Belgian economist.
The Voice of America reported by end September that the
US government was willing to buy the uranium from the
Kinshasa University Nuclear Research Centre which is equipped
with two small reactors, one of them out of order. The
International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAAE) of which
Congo is a member, consequently expressed concerns for
the risk of trafficking radioactive materials out of this
Centre, which may end up in the hands of terrorists. But
neither Leclercq nor the Congolese experts in charge of
the Centre did not believe there was such a danger. La
Tempête des Tropiques a Kinshasa-based daily, said
that the type of uranium stored there was not convenient
for military use anyway. In addition, the Americans themselves
would be the first to learn about the disappearance of
uranium from there. Several years ago, the US embassy
in Kinshasa offered its assistance to help the Centre
prevent erosion damages which threatened to trigger the
dissemination of radioactive materials in the neighbourhood.
In fact, the Centre for Nuclear Research or the Centre
de Recherches Nucléaires de Kinshasa (CREN-K) was
established by the Americans at the University of Lovanium
(now University of Kinshasa) and entrusted to Mgr Luc
Gillon, a Belgian Scheut Missionary, as a recompense to
Belgium for having supplied the uranium to the Americans.
Financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Centre boasted
a 50 KW nuclear reactor, type MKI, then another 1MW nuclear
reactor, type MKII, both manufactured by the American
firm Gulf general Atomics. Although the centre's purpose
was simply limited to Medical and agricultural research,
we must not forget that it was Cold war then.
Some Congolese have indeed tried to sell useless uranium
ore to unscrupulous clients. In November 2001, the Italian
daily, La Republica splashed a story about a network led
by a former Mobutu official, trying to sell 10 kgs of
uranium 235 and 238 contained in plastic bottles from
Congo to Irak and North Korea, through Belgium, Italy
and Libya.
A couple of years ago, one of these traffickers was found
shot dead near Lyon in France, after having tried to sell
uranium to a client who probably felt he was being cheated.
Also, during the late Laurent Désiré Kabila's
reign, the presence of North-Korean soldiers in Katanga
sparked speculation about their interest for Chinkolobwe's
uranium deposits.
But Leclercq still dismissed these reports as a fantasies.
"Assuming they found something, it is unlikely they
could use this ore for military purposes. They, too were
probably lured by the 'myth' of Congolese uranium,"
said Leclercq.
Meanwhile, the South African Council for the Non-Proliferation
of Weapons of Mass Destruction has denied that it has
ever approved exports of aluminium tubes, that can be
used for uranium enrichment, to Iraq. The chairperson
of the council, Abdul Minty, was reacting to allegations
that such equipment had been supplied. He said no enquiry
about aluminium tubes had been received from Iraq or anyone
else. Minty said the South African Government would not,
as a matter of policy, provide equipment or technologies
that could be used in the development of a weapon of mass
destruction to any country that was deemed to pose a proliferation
risk.
