Evidence Suggests that Egypt Produced Nuclear Materials

January 5, 2005

The U.N. atomic watchdog agency has found evidence of secret nuclear experiments in Egypt that could be used in weapons programs, diplomats said Tuesday.

The diplomats said that most of the work was carried out in the 1980s and 1990s but said the International Atomic Energy Agency also was looking at evidence suggesting some work was performed as recently as last year.

The Egyptian government ejected claims it is or has been pursuing a weapons program, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

"A few months ago we denied these kinds of claims and we do so again," Egyptian government spokesman Magdy Rady said. "Nothing about our nuclear program is secret and there is nothing that is not known to the IAEA."

But one of the diplomats said the Egyptians "tried to produce various components of uranium" without declaring it to the IAEA, as they were bound to under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The products included several pounds of uranium metal and uranium tetrafluoride- a precursor to uranium hexafluoride gas, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Uranium metal can be processed into plutonium, while uranium hexafluoride can be enriched into weapons-grade uranium- both for use in the core of nuclear warheads.

Sources said that the IAEA had not made a conclusion about the scope and purpose of the experiments.

But the work appeared to have been sporadic, involved small amounts of material and lacked a particular focus, which would indicated that the work was not directly geared toward creating a full scale program to make nuclear weapons, sources said.