London, Feb 2 (IANS) Al Qaeda has been trying to stockpile ‘dirty’ nuclear explosives and recruit rogue scientists to plot 9/11-like terror attacks in world’s major cities, secret US diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks have revealed.
Tomihiro Taniguchi, the deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has warned the US that the world faces the threat of a ‘nuclear 9/11’, if stores of uranium and plutonium were not secured against terrorists, the Telegraph reported citing the leaked documents.
But the diplomats visiting the IAEA’s headquarters in Austria’s capital Vienna in April 2008 said that there was ‘no way to provide perimeter security’ to its own laboratory because it has windows that leave it vulnerable to break-ins.
At a Nato meeting in January 2009, security chiefs briefed member states that Al Qaeda was plotting a programme of ‘dirty radioactive IEDs’, makeshift nuclear roadside bombs that could be used against British troops in Afghanistan.
As well as causing a large explosion, a ‘dirty bomb’ attack would contaminate the area for many years.
An Indian national security adviser told American security personnel in June 2008 that terrorists had made a ‘manifest attempt to get fissile material’ and ‘have the technical competence to manufacture an explosive device beyond a mere dirty bomb’.
Alerts about the smuggling of nuclear material, sent to Washington from US embassies across the globe, show how criminal and terrorist gangs were trafficking large amounts of highly radioactive material across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Thousands of classified US cables obtained by WikiLeaks and passed to the Telegraph also reveal the international efforts to stop the spread of weapons-grade nuclear, chemical and biological material around the globe.
The alerts sent from US embassies explain how customs guards at border crossings used radiation alarms to identify and seize cargoes of uranium and plutonium.
Freight trains were found to be carrying weapons-grade nuclear material across the Kazakhstan-Russia border, highly enriched uranium was transported across Uganda by bus, and a ‘small-time hustler’ in Lisbon offered to sell radioactive plates stolen from Chernobyl.
In one incident in September 2009, two employees at the Rossing uranium mine in Namibia smuggled almost half a tonne of uranium concentrate powder – yellowcake – out of the compound in plastic bags.
‘Acute safety and security concerns’ were even raised in 2008 about the uranium and plutonium laboratory of the IAEA.
A document detailing official talks in London in February 2009 reveals that British defence officials have also raised ‘deep concerns’ that a rogue scientist in the Pakistani nuclear programme ‘could gradually smuggle enough material out to make a weapon’.
Agricultural stores of deadly biological pathogens in Pakistan are also vulnerable to ‘extremists’ who could use supplies of anthrax, foot and mouth disease and avian flu to develop lethal biological weapons.
Anthrax and other biological agents, including smallpox and avian flu, could be sprayed from a shop-bought aerosol can in a crowded area, leaked security briefings warn.
The disclosures come a year after US President Barack Obama declared nuclear terrorism ‘the single biggest threat’ to international security with the potential to cause ‘extraordinary loss of life’.
