Arab News

BAGHDAD, 29 June 2003 — Environmental group Greenpeace yesterday urged villagers near Iraq’s largest and badly-looted nuclear facility to stop using radioactive barrels to store water and food. Greenpeace said it was offering clean storage containers to the residents who live near the Tuwaitha nuclear plant, some 25 kilometers south of the capital.

“Greenpeace hopes that by offering new barrels specifically designed for water storage we can return the last of the contaminated barrels to the US military for safekeeping inside the Tuwaitha site,” Greenpeace’s Mike Townsley said in a statement.

The residents, at great risk to their health, have been using the contaminated barrels since the plant was looted at the end of the US-led invasion of Iraq. The barrels were contaminated with a uranium by-product known as “yellowcake” and Greenpeace has warned that the water supply may have been poisoned as residents, mostly farmers, washed the barrels in the nearby Tigris River.

While the US Army buys radioactive barrels for three dollars each, many people keep them as a new barrel costs $15, Greenpeace said. Some 150 out of 500 barrels stolen from the Tuwaitha plant are still unaccounted for, it said. “We collected six barrels today. It is a significant start. We are hoping to collect more,” said Townsley.

On Tuesday, Greenpeace returned a large mixing canister containing three kilograms worth of yellowcake to US troops stationed inside the nuclear plant.

The group has also uncovered radioactivity in a number of buildings, including one source measuring 10,000 times above normal and another, outside a 900-pupil primary school, measuring 3,000 times above normal.

The environmental group also urged the US-led coalition to give the International Atomic Energy Agency a full mandate to search, survey and make sure the towns and villages around the plant are radiation free. The environmental group accused the coalition of refusing so far to allow experts from the IAEA to carry out proper documentation and decontamination in Iraq.

Meanwhile, a fire swept through a Baghdad warehouse yesterday where schoolbooks were being stored, with a US soldier saying looters may have set the blaze. The officer, who asked not to be named, said the fire had started at around midday, and an AFP reporter at the scene saw thick smoke still billowing from the site around one hour later.

US troops caught two young Iraqis trying to escape from the building and handed them over to Iraqi police, the officer said. Fire crews were called to tackle the blaze. It was not known if the warehouse contained new schoolbooks which the US-led authorities are currently printing to replace textbooks which included references to Saddam Hussein and his ousted regime.

The coalition authority has admitted it is suffering political sabotage by remnants of the toppled Baath Party, while looters continue to sift through the wreckage of abandoned buildings, often starting fires as they leave.

Another fire in Baghdad yesterday destroyed a warehouse storing paper used for printing Iraqi dinars while firefighters and US troops battled a fire at a sulfur plant in northern Iraq for a third day. It was not immediately known what caused both fires or if they were linked to a recent wave of sabotage and looting.