"The American authorities just informed us of their intention to remove the materials, but they never sought authorization from us," Gustavo Zlauvinen, head of the IAEA's New York office, told the AP.

Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, said Tuesday that Iraq's low-enriched uranium could have yielded enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb - if it was the standard 3 percent to 5 percent enrichment level common in fuel for commercial power reactors.

Opponents of the Iraq war have long argued that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a nuclear threat. Though the existence of Saddam's nuclear fuel stockpile had been known to U.S. officials for years, neither the Bush administration nor the American media have done much to publicize the news.

During the 1990s, North Korea had little trouble circumventing IAEA inspectors, developing its own fully operational nuclear weapons program in defiance of a treaty signed with the Clinton administration.

In a press release issued by the Energy Department on Tuesday, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham defended the U.S. removal operation as "a major achievement" that kept "potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists."

While the U.N. was kept in the dark about the operation, which was completed on June 23, Iraq's new interim government was informed ahead of time and apparently did not object.

After the first Gulf War, roughly two tons of natural uranium, or yellow cake, plus some low-enriched uranium and some depleted uranium, was left at al Tuwaitha under IAEA seal and control, agency spokesman Zlauvinen said.

While Saddam kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998, he permitted the IAEA to guard the al Tuwaitha facility, though it's not clear how closely they were able to monitor operations at the site.

While under similar supervision by the IAEA during 1990s, North Korea successfully acquired the capacity to make nuclear weapons, along with ICBMs that can strike the continental U.S.

In December 2002, Pyongyang kicked out IAEA inspectors after announcing to the world that it was proceeding full speed ahead with its nuclear weapons development program.

The IAEA left Iraq in March 2003, just before the U.S. invasion.

After the war, the al Tuwaitha facility was looted, raising new concerns that some of Saddam's nuclear fuel could have fallen into the hands of terrorists.

Invited back to Iraq by the U.S. after the war, IAEA inspectors recovered most of the missing uranium. Agency spokesman Zlauvinen said the nuclear fuel was put in sealed containers and left for the Americans to guard.

Al Tuwaitha is now under the control of Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology.

Editor's note: