UN Nuke Inspectors Arrive In Libya

Libya on Saturday said its welcoming of the world's top nuclear watchdog was a "strategic" step and urged all nations, particularly Israel, to dispose of weapons of mass destruction.

Abdel-Rahman Shalqam, the foreign minister, in a press conference with U.N. nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei, said Libya's 15-year-old weapons program did not produce any weapons.

"We don't have weapons of mass destruction," he said. "We didn't arrive to the point of weaponization."

ElBaradei, who arrived with a team of experts earlier in the day, had said earlier that Libya appeared to be far from producing nuclear arms.

Shalqam reiterated what Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had surprisingly announced more than a week ago: that Libya would cooperate with full transparency with the International Atomic Energy Agency and sign a protocol allowing wide-ranging inspections on short notice.

"We are sure that this step is a strategic one, and we call up on others to follow," Shalqam said. "This is a clear message to everybody, especially the Israelis, that they must start disposing of weapons of mass destruction."

ElBaradei praised Libya's new openness as a step in the right direction, "particularly in the Middle East."

"Libya is opening its doors for us and we will take full advantage to implement our mandate," he said.

He said his team would immediately begin technical discussions with Libyan experts and officials and would visit all the relevant sites.

"This protocol is not meant to be a threat to a country's national security or dignity but an objective tool to give assurance that the activities are for peaceful means," ElBaradei said.

A little more than a week ago, Gadhafi's government announced the North African country would abandon its efforts to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them. Gadhafi promised to reveal current nuclear programs, adhere to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and sign the protocol.

Gadhafi later said his country's action might put pressure on Israel, the only Mideast nation believed to posses nuclear arms, to disarm. Israel refuses to confirm or deny a weapons program.

Libya's surprise revelations followed eight months of covert negotiations and inspections by British and U.S. intelligence officials. Gadhafi's pledge to come clean is the latest in a series of moves to end his country's international isolation and shed its image as a rogue nation.

Shalqam said the government had started to discuss dismantling Libya's 15-year-old weapons program about four years ago.

ElBaradei said Libya received its weapons equipment "through the black market and middle people."

Earlier Saturday, ElBaradei told The Associated Press that the extent of Libya's covert activities was not known but the country appeared to be far from producing nuclear arms.

What is known, ElBaradei said on the Vienna to Amsterdam leg of his flight to the Libyan capital, is that the Libyans "tried to develop an enrichment capability," for uranium, apparently as part of a nascent weapons program that was later abandoned.

The IAEA, the U.N. anti-nuclear proliferation watchdog, was sidelined during the covert U.S.-British talks that led to Libya's announcement that it had, and planned to scrap, weapons of mass destruction.

Diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity told the AP the agency now had access to U.S. and British intelligence, but ElBaradei on Saturday acknowledged that his team was nonetheless going in knowing relatively little.

"Whether they succeeded to a weapons program, we will have to see, but as far as I was told they have only a rudimentary program," that never proceeded to the stage of enriching uranium, a crucial step on the way to making nuclear warheads or bombs, he said.

Still, he said he could not rule out that IAEA teams would find evidence of "weaponization" of uranium through enrichment.

ElBaradei's team included Iran and Iraq experts. He said that allowed a "multidisciplinary" approach that would include looking both for evidence of a known weapons program, as Iraq proved to have in the early 1990s, and details of advanced enrichment activities such as Iran's, which the IAEA is now scrutinizing for possible weapons applications.

Also high on the agenda over the coming weeks was a search for "interconnectivity" between Libya's and Iran's suspect nuclear programs, he said.

Diplomats familiar with the agency who spoke on condition of anonymity told the AP they expected such evidence to surface, particularly in the field of centrifuge technology used in enrichment.

Libya has been making efforts to erase its tainted international image.

The United Nations lifted sanctions against Libya after it accepted responsibility in September for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and agreed to pay US$2.7 billion to the victims' families.

The United States imposed sanctions against Libya in 1986, claiming it supported terrorist groups. It continues its embargoes but after Gadhafi's nuclear promise hinted at improved economic relations.