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The United States and Britain agreed on Monday to let the UN nuclear watchdog oversee Libya's atomic disarmament, but for US and British experts to carry out the removal and destruction of equipment, the watchdog's chief said. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was speaking after meeting in Vienna with US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton and British envoy William Ehrman to resolve a dispute over the two sides' roles in Libya. Under the deal, the United States and Britain would provide logistical support to the inspection missions carried out by the IAEA, ElBaradei said. "I think we have agreement on what needs to be done. Clearly the agency role is very clear that we need to do the verification," ElBaradei commented. Non-proliferation expert Gary Samore told AFP the idea was "to work out some accommodation, so that both sides can say they carried out their missions." The meeting came amid a turf battle over who should take the leading role in verifying that Libya is making good on its promise to give up nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. IAEA, US and British weapons inspectors have all been to Libya since Tripoli announced the shift in mid-December following months of secret negotiations between Tripoli, London and Washington. The US administration of George W. Bush had accused the IAEA, which is mandated to monitor adherence to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of rushing into Libya. But ElBaradei said that "obviously we do the verification, to make sure that we have seen everything in Libya" and that all weapons programs have been declared. Then the IAEA will need help with moving weapons of mass destruction equipment out of Libya or destroying it. "Clearly we will need American and British support with logistics," ElBaradei said. "I think we have reached a good agreement on how to proceed," he said, adding that consultations would continue. Bolton said: "It was a very productive meeting. I think we are on the same page with the IAEA." IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told AFP last week that the IAEA was the international community's sole institution mandated to inspect nuclear programs. The IAEA, which is monitoring Iran's atomic program and did this in Iraq as well until the war and US occupation there, is clearly concerned about maintaining its role. A Vienna-based diplomat said there were "hurt feelings" at the IAEA when the United States and Britain surprised the world, and the agency, with the agreement they won December 19 from Tripoli to abandon biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs. The New York Times in December quoted a senior US official who called ElBaradei's visit to Libya shortly after the agreement "a badly advised public relations exercise at a time when the US Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6 spy agency were developing strong bonds with Libya's military and intelligence chiefs." The United States disagrees with IAEA assessments that Libya was far from developing nuclear weapons as it thinks Tripoli was further along in nuclear technology. Samore, who is from London's International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said the "IAEA's ability to find clandestine facilities is very limited unless armed with intelligence information" from countries like the United States and Britain. But ElBaradei said the IAEA was "getting lots of good information" from these two countries as well as its own inspection teams. He said new IAEA teams would be visiting Libya "over the next 10 days." The United States, which has not had an embassy in Libya since the 1980s, is considering setting up an office there to give US inspectors there logistical, technical and secretarial support. All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links
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