Experts: Iraq unable to get material for nuclear bomb

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Thursday that Iraq could make a nuclear bomb within a year after getting enriched uranium or plutonium. But Saddam Hussein has been unable to get that nuclear fuel for more than a decade.

There are two ways for him to get these fissile materials: purchasing them from the black market or making them himself. U.S. officials and independent experts said he had had no luck at either.

Despite "trying like the dickens," said a senior U.S. official, Iraqi front companies are not believed to have succeeded in buying any significant quantities of highly enriched uranium or plutonium on the international black market.

"It's hard, because there is not much of it out there and there are a lot of people trying to prevent bad people from getting it," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Moreover, there is no evidence that Iraqi engineers have succeeded in rebuilding the country's fissile materials-production facilities, some of which were destroyed by U.S. bombs in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and others by U.N. inspectors afterward, U.S. officials and experts said.