Johannesburg — Weapons-grade material could be in the hands of terrorists and criminals

SOUTH Africa is "deeply concerned" about missing "weapons of mass destruction" in Africa, particularly weapons-grade uranium from a nuclear enrichment programme run by the late Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

South African intelligence is also worried about a missing Stinger anti-aircraft missile that was given to Angolan rebels in the 1980s. Billy Masetlha, the new director-general of the National Intelligence Agency, made these dramatic disclosures in an interview with the Sunday Times.

Before taking over at the NIA, Masetlha was co-chairman of the "Third Party Verification Mechanism for the DRC-Rwanda Peace Agreement", which advises President Thabo Mbeki on the Central African region's progress towards peace and democracy. Masetlha said Mobutu's regime, with the help of "a Western power", had set up a programme that could make the explosive component of a nuclear bomb. Mobutu, a Cold War ally of the West, ruled Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) with an iron fist from 1965 to 1997. He was toppled by Laurent Kabila's rebels.

Masetlha said "a Western power" had helped Mobutu to develop a nuclear programme to give him "the capacity to fight in the Cold War". Mobutu was considered "to be a very reliable friend, very special in the eyes of the West", Masetlha said. Seven years after the fall of Mobutu and in the wake of a bloody civil war, no one knew what had become of his enrichment programme.

For all the intelligence services knew, remnants of it could be in the hands of terrorists or criminals. "It could be anybody's for a price," Masetlha said. He said South Africa was also worried about the disappearance of at least one Stinger missile, part of a consignment supplied to Unita, Angola's erstwhile rebel movement. Most of the missiles were eventually recovered from Unita but at least one was still missing.

The "Western power" that had supplied the highly effective anti- aircraft weapon was "now asking everyone in the region" if anyone knew where it was. The matter was also of deep concern to South Africa's intelligence services because of this country's "porous" borders and the instability of states such as Congo. It is believed that Mobutu's enrichment programme was based at a facility "upstream from Kinshasa". The project was run separately from the country's civilian nuclear research programme, which was established during the colonial era.

Two fuel rods went missing from a civilian reactor in the late 1980s, only one of which was recovered from the Sicilian Mafia by Italian police. According to Masetlha, the separate programme that enriched "weapons-grade uranium" was established on the banks of the Congo River "in the late 1970s, early 1980s", as a way of containing the Soviet Union's ambitions in Africa. It was "discontinued by the early 1990s" because of "problems with security" in Zaire. Unfortunately, the decommissioning of the nuclear programme appears to have been incomplete, as a result of which "questions about the equipment" remain unanswered.

These included the present whereabouts of weapons-grade nuclear material, Masetlha said. Congo has been a key source of uranium for the West since the birth of nuclear technology in the 1930s, and provided most of the uranium used to make the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Judy Moon, a spokesman for the US Embassy in Pretoria, said US security and diplomatic personnel in Washington, Kinshasa and Pretoria were not aware of any enrichment programme in Congo or a missing Stinger missile.

Bene M'poko, Congo's ambassador in Pretoria, said he was unaware of any nuclear weapons programme in his country but added that he had lived outside Congo for most of his life. The Belgian secret service was sceptical that such a programme existed, although a source in Brussels conceded that "anything was possible" in Mobutu's Zaire. However, the service was aware of a missing Stinger missile.

Mark Grozwecky, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, said the agency was aware of "uranium production" in Congo, "given the traditional role of Congo as a uranium producer". "Normally that would involve processing the natural uranium ore into [uranium oxide] and then to yellow cake," Grozwecky said. "But this is a far cry from enrichment for [weapons] purposes."