The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Monday confirmed that nearly 400 tons of powerful explosives have disappeared from a former military installation in Iraq.  

The UN nuclear agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in Vienna that the Iraqi government reported the explosives' disappearance on Oct. 10, and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei will report the issue to the UN Security Council later Monday.

She said the several hundred tons of explosives -- used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons -- were missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations, about 50 kilometers south of Baghdad.

The New York Times reported Monday that the explosives "was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no-man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday."

"White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion," according to the report.

US Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry used the incident to repeat his criticism that the Bush administration went to war with Iraq without proper preparations.

"George W. Bush, who talks tough, and brags about making America being safer has once again failed to deliver," Kerry said in a rally in Dover, New Hampshire. "This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration," he said.

"Terrorists could use this material to kill our troops, our people, blow up airplanes and level buildings," Kerry said.

The White House said Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month of the missing explosives. But it is unclear whether Bush was informed.

US officials said the Iraq Survey Group, the CIA task force that searched for unconventional weapons, has been ordered to investigate the disappearance of the explosives.

US investigating missing explosives in Iraq

US President George W. Bush has directed to investigate the missing of powerful explosives from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations and the US-led multinational forces are looking into the matter, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Monday.

"The president wants to make sure that we get to the bottom of this. Now the Pentagon, upon learning of this, directed the multinational forces and the Iraqi Survey Group to look into this and that is that they are currently doing," McClellan said at a news briefing.

McClellan said that the Iraqi interim government told the IAEA on Oct. 10 that there were about 350 tons of high explosives missing from Al Qaqaa in Iraq and then the IAEA informed the US mission in Vienna on Oct. 15.

US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice informed President Bush on Oct. 15 after learning about this from the US mission in Vienna, McClellan said.

"This cache of explosives was missing because of some looting that went on Iraq toward the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or during and toward the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom," McClellan said.

Bush declared the Iraq war, formally known as the Operation Iraqi Freedom, which ended on May 1 last year.

(Xinhua News Agency October 26, 2004)