'Nuclear data' found in scientist's home

Documents found at the home of an Iraqi scientist appear to outline hi-tech attempts to enrich uranium in the 1980s, the head of the UN nuclear control agency said yesterday.

But other senior agency experts say the method, which could be used to make nuclear weapons, was too sophisticated for the Iraqis to exploit at the time.

A western diplomat close to the inspectors claimed that the documents were not old. "They are new and they relate to ongoing work taking place in Iraq to develop nuclear weapons," he said. However, others involved with the investigation disagreed.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the research in the 3,000 documents had "something to do with laser enrichment".

UN officials have said Iraq's attempt at "laser isotope separation", begun during the 1970s, was a failure and was largely abandoned by 1987 in favour of more promising approaches to enriching uranium for nuclear bombs.

But Mr ElBaradei said the issue appeared to be more whether or not the Iraqis had included this information in the 12,000-page declaration they submitted to the UN last month. "If it's something we did not know about, it obviously does not show the transparency we've been preaching," Mr ElBaradei said, alluding to UN demands that Baghdad be more forthcoming with UN inspectors.

The documents were found on Thursday by UN inspectors in the home of Faleh Hassan, a 55-year-old physicist, as they paid their first unannounced calls on private homes in Iraq.

Dr Hassan said last night that Iraq cancelled its laser enrichment research programme in 1988, and that he never worked on the project. "I worked for the Nuclear Energy Agency, which was separate from the [enrichment] programme," he said.

The physicist said earlier that when an accompanying Iraqi official briefly left his side, a female UN inspector offered to arrange for him to leave Iraq as an "escort" for his wife who needed medical treatment.Dr Hassan said he refused the offer, calling it "Mafia-like behaviour".

The scientist, who is the director of the Al-Razi military industrial site, said the documents were from his own private research work and the graduate theses of students he had advised. But Mr ElBaradei said the documents were official, and defended the inspectors' conduct.

Under the tough UN sanctions regime, inspectors are allowed to speak to Iraqi scientists in private and even take them outside the country for interviews – a move that Washington hopes will prompt them to reveal hidden arms programmes.