U.S. finds jobs in Iraq for nuclear scientists
Farah Stockman The Boston Globe


Goal is to thwart proliferation threat

WASHINGTON Fifteen months ago, the U.S. government wanted to arrest and interrogate Jaffar Dhia Jaffar, the father of Iraq's nuclear program.

Now, it wants to get him a job.

State Department officials have sent several messages through intermediaries to the aging particle physicist, letting him know that he has a chance to earn a healthy salary, a well-stocked research lab and a place at the table of the new Iraq.

The overtures to Jaffar - who now lives in the United Arab Emirates - are part of a State Department effort to hire unemployed Iraqi weapons scientists who U.S. officials believe are in danger of passing their expertise in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare to rogue regimes or terrorist groups.

Begun quietly in an unmarked villa outside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, the U.S.-financed Iraqi International Center for Science and Industry already employs about 60 scientists, half of whom were recently investigated or imprisoned on the orders of the U.S. team that was searching for Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Although now it appears that Saddam's weapons programs withered away a decade ago after the Gulf War, the scientists who worked on them are still a possible proliferation threat, according to State Department officials who hope to engage as many as 500 former weapons scientists on reconstruction projects in Iraq that provide an alternative to weapons work.

A U.S. under secretary of state, John Bolton, has described the effort as a "race against time." Indeed, at least one Iraqi nuclear engineer told U.S. officials he had been approached by both insurgents and by Iranians who offered him a substantial sum of money to work on their own nuclear program. Another Iraqi weapons scientist with a doctorate in mechanical engineering is believed to have traveled to Tehran.

"Iran, Syria or Al Qaeda would have high interest in these scientists," said David Albright, a former weapons inspector who has arranged jobs for some Iraqi weapons scientists in the United States. "This is a far more difficult situation than Russia."

Albright said the Iraqi scientists could be killed or kidnapped far more easily than in Russia.

The State Department has provided $2 million for the scientist program, which was modeled after a similar effort in Russia and the former Soviet republics. The former U.S.-led occupation authority also had earmarked $37 million, raised from the sale of Iraqi oil, for related nonproliferation projects to be run by the Iraqi government.

"Someone who knew 10 years ago how to produce chemical weapons against the Kurds still knows how, still has the recipe," said Anne Harrington, deputy director of the State Department's Office of Proliferation Threat Reduction. Harrington's team is scheduled to brief Senator Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the scientist recruitment program Friday in Washington. Lugar has been a central player in the initiative to tighten controls over nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.

To persuade scientists not to sell their skills on the open market, the State Department program arranges for them to become consultants to Iraq's ministries - from the environment to the oil industry - and pays generous salaries. Other perks are expected to include access to satellite-based Internet, reconstruction of laboratories, assistance with research grants, possible venture capital funds, and travel opportunities, like an upcoming trip to the United States for eight former weapons scientists.

"It's not enough to pay a salary. You have to give them back their self-esteem as scientists," said Alex Dehgan, who ran the program in Iraq for the State Department under a fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Obviously these guys had a lot of prestige and they had built up careers that had suddenly come to an end."

The program got off to a difficult start. Recruitment was a challenge, as many prospective scientists were in hiding or in prison, like General Amir Saadi, once Saddam's liaison to UN weapons inspectors, who has reportedly been kept in solitary confinement since he surrendered last April. The treatment of the scientists sparked bitterness that continues to this day.

"We are not fools," said Imad Khadduri, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist now living in Canada. "They think we are simply puppets. The whole scientific infrastructure they have blown to pieces."

A major challenge is battling the perception that Americans are rewarding scientists who once worked on Saddam's illicit programs. For instance, Hussain al-Shahristani, the former head of the Iraqi nuclear energy agency who spent more than a decade in Abu Ghraib prison because he refused to work on Saddam's bomb, was not offered a space at the U.S.-financed center because he is not a weapons scientist.

With the handover of authority in Iraq, many scientists are being released from prison. But the fate of many others is still unknown. Some have scattered across the country or fled abroad.

Jaffar, the face of Saddam's nuclear ambitions, has re-entered the scientific community while in exile, attending conferences and recently joining Iraq's new National Academy of Sciences, which was founded by Shahristani with the help of State Department funds.

The Boston Globe

From: http://www.iht.com/articles/529665.htm