Canadian Intelligence: 'Axis of Evil' in Hot Pursuit of Nukes
Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2002 1:28 p.m. EST
A report by Canada's intelligence service released yesterday said that "axis of evil" countries Iraq, Iran and North Korea are aggressively pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons and warned they may share them with terrorists who threaten the U.S.
"Iraq, with its demonstrated history of a large-scale program, appears determined to acquire a nuclear weapons capability at the earliest opportunity," the report said, according to Canada's National Post. "So do Iran and Libya, albeit being considerably less advanced."
While it's long been known that Iraq and North Korea were developing nuclear weapons, the prospect that Iran has the same ambition may explain why President Bush included the country in his "axis of evil" designation last month.
Iran has attempted to acquire the capacity to enrich uranium necessary to produce nuclear weapons by purchasing components piecemeal from suppliers in Western Europe, according to U.S. military and intelligence sources quoted in the CSIS report.
Dr. Khidir Hamza, who ran the Iraqi nuclear weapons program during the late 1980s and early 1990s, said last week that the bomb his team built for Saddam Hussein was complete except for that key ingredient. Hamza contended that Hussein is now working on a bomb that could have twice the explosive power of the one detonated over Hiroshima in 1945.
The former top Iraqi physicist said his scientists were in the process of obtaining enriched uranium from French scientists when the Gulf War interrupted the Iraqi nuke program.
Internal al-Qaeda documents recovered during the war in Afghanistan show that Osama bin Laden had obtained designs for nuclear weapons, possibly from Pakistani nuclear scientists sympathetic to his cause, the Post said.
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