Pentagon accounts for some explosives

The Pentagon yesterday said U.S. Army troops removed an estimated 250 tons of ammunition, including plastic explosives, from the Al-Qaqaa weapons storage site in Iraq weeks after the war began.

Defense officials said they believe the 250 tons of explosives that Army troops destroyed after overruning the facility south of Baghdad included some of the 380 tons of explosives that have been reported missing.

“We believe [the 250 tons] constitutes some portion of those weapons,” said Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita. The Pentagon is still investigating the possibility of missing explosives, including ingredients for plastic explosives and nuclear weapons.

Army Maj. Austin Pearson, who was with the 24th Ordnance Company at Al-Qaqaa, said the weapons his company removed and destroyed were not under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The IAEA was notified by the new Iraqi government in a letter earlier this month that 380 tons of high explosives at Al-Qaqaa that had been under seal were missing and presumed looted by Iraqis in the chaos after the fall of Baghdad April 6.

“I did not see any IAEA seals at the locations that we went into,” Maj. Pearson said. “I was not looking for that.”

Mr. DiRita said the IAEA statements that the missing explosives included 141 tons of RDX, an ingredient in plastic explosives, are also being questioned.

“They first said there were some 141 tons of it there; we’re now trying to better understand some of the reports that indicate there may have only been three tons of it at that particular facility,” Mr. DiRita said.

News videotape showing barrels containing unidentified explosives at Al-Qaqaa that was filmed by an ABC affiliate crew during the conflict also have not yet been identified as either RDX or HMX, which are used in making nuclear weapons, Pentagon officials said.

Mr. DiRita said there were signs that the missing explosives were moved out of the facility by Saddam’s government before the war.

“There was some apparent movement of heavy equipment in this facility at a time when only Saddam Hussein was in control of that facility, meaning after [U.N.] inspectors left the country and before U.S. forces arrived to begin the liberation of the country,” Mr. DiRita said.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, revealed this week that two European intelligence services have evidence that Russian special forces units were dispatched to Iraq in the months before the invasion.

Mr. Shaw told The Washington Times that the intelligence reports indicated that the Russians shredded documents on Moscow’s arms deals with Iraq, and used trucks to move weapons covertly to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran.

Other Bush administration officials have said they are unaware of Mr. Shaw’s information, and the Russian government has denied any involvement.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a radio interviewer on Thursday that he had no information on the Russian role in moving weapons and “cannot validate that even slightly.”

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