The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, whose agents have been operating in Iraq for two months, said Monday that it was still too early to determine whether Saddam Hussein's regime was trying to develop nuclear weapons.
"We are not certain of Iraq's (nuclear) capability," Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters. He spoke at the end of a top-level meeting of his International Atomic Energy Agency. ElBaradei added laboratory tests of samples from Iraq had found nothing suspicious.
Meanwhile, the United Nations estimates that a U.S.-led war to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could place about 10 million Iraqi civilians, including more than 2 million refugees and homeless, at risk of hunger and disease and in need of immediate assistance, according to a U.N. planning document, quoted Tuesday by The Washington Post.
U.N. officials warned that the impact of a U.S. air and ground invasion in Iraq would likely be worse than the humanitarian crisis caused by the Gulf War in 1991 because a decade of U.N. sanctions has made the Iraqi population almost totally dependent on government handouts for survival.
"The bulk of the population is now totally dependent on the government of Iraq for a majority, if not all, of their basic needs," the document said. (Albawaba.com)
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