(498.4918) WISE Amsterdam -Algeria appears committed not to produce the atomic bomb since it has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is supposedly submitting to the control of the IAEA. Nevertheless, it continues to work on a nuclear program that goes beyond civil needs and there are now installations for the production of militarily usable plutonium. This is the warning of a confidential report made by El Cesid (the Spanish military intelligence agency) in July of this year, and made public in late August in the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
According to this report, Algeria will be ready at the end of this century to start nuclear armament production if the authorities decide to.
The report states that at this moment, Algeria is fully committed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, the Algerian program has had from its very start the capability to develop into a military direction, and it continues to obtain all the possibilities and equipment for the production of military plutonium.
The political instability of Algeria, which is confronted with a bloody civil conflict since the 1991 elections (which resulted in a victory of fundamentalist Islamic groups) but were nullified, makes it very possible that a future Algerian authority might revoke the current opinion on the nuclear bomb.
The intelligence report does not leave any doubt on the purpose of the secret agreements signed by Algeria with China and Argentina in the early 1980s: the production of plutonium necessary for the atomic bomb.
It is not the first time Algeria is suspected of having military intentions with its nuclear program. In 1991 reports about military cooperation with Iraq were numerous. Is was under pressure mainly from the US in the early '90s, when satellite pictures showed unusually large cooling towers for a 15-MW reactor and a heavily guarded construction site at the Es Salam ("Peace") reactor at Ain Oussera, which urged the country to accept the regime and to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995. This reactor is located in the Atlas mountains in the neighborhood of Birine, 250 kilometers south of Algiers. The inspection of the Algerian installations by the IAEA generated tensions when three kilograms of enriched uranium, some liters of heavy water and several tablets of natural uranium, delivered by China, were found. This had not been reported to the IAEA.
Inspections by the IAEA every three months cannot guarantee that these activities continue, as is proven by the examples of North Korea, Iraq, South Africa and others. The Es Salam nuclear reactor has a theoretical production power of three kilos of plutonium a year but the report states that only a few grams can be diverted for military purposes without being detected by the international controls.
Moreover, Algeria is dependent on the delivery of nuclear fuel. The IAEA confirms Algeria bought 150 tons of uranium concentrate in Niger in 1984. New uranium deposits have recently been discovered in the area of Hoggar in the southeastern part of the country. The documentation of this project is classified as secret, which is amazing because the Algerian authorities emphasize the fully civil and peaceful uses of the installations.
Not only the military intelligence agency is concerned about the Algerian nuclear program but the Washington-based Center of International Strategic Studies (CISS), which published in June a report stating that the Algerian military forces had missiles able to launch nuclear weapons.
Algeria also owns underground test facilities where France, before the country's independence, tested its nuclear weapons.
China has been the main supplier of nuclear technology to Algeria since both countries signed a secret agreement in 1983.
The agreement contained the building of a reactor in Es Salam, a laboratory with hot cells and one for the products of radio isotopes. Es Salam is a 15 MW heavy water research reactor, able to produce militarily usable plutonium. It started officially in 1992, and only functioned in certain test periods. Also the building of reactor for hot cells has been ended. In hot cells, radiated nuclear fuel is processed. The third and last phase of the nuclear program is the construction of a laboratory for the production of radio isotopes, with a capacity to separate plutonium out of the nuclear fuel.
For this last phase Algeria and China agreed on a contract in May 1997 for an amount of US$1.9 million. The construction has not yet started but will probably start this autumn and will take about two years.
Next to the Chinese cooperation, there is cooperation with Argentina which sold the NUR nuclear research reactor. Argentina also agreed to build a facility for the production of nuclear fuel, theoretically to use in the NUR plant, but in reality for Es Salam, according to the EL Cesid report. As the Algerians mentioned construction faults and Argentina claims Algeria has not yet paid everything for the installation, the plant is not yet started although it should already have started in 1990. However, it will probably start at the end of this year.
Source:
- El Pais (Spain), 23 August 1998
- Jeune Afrique, 15 May 1991
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