WASHINGTON, October 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Some 350 metric tones (380 tones) of explosives that vanished from an Iraqi military base shortly after the US occupation became the spotlight of the US presidential race, with Democrat John Kerry seizing on the episode to grill incumbent George Bush.

“George W. Bush, who talks tough, talks tough, and brags about making America safer has once again failed to deliver,” Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted the Massachusetts senator as telling a rally in Dover, New Hampshire late Monday, October 25.

“After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq, this president failed to guard those stockpiles.”

“This is one of the great blunders of Iraq, one of the great blunders of this administration,” Kerry said.

Kerry was speaking just minutes after the issue was referred by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the UN Security Council.

The Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology has informed the UN nuclear watchdog that the explosive materials had been stolen and looted because of a lack of security at government installations.

“On October 10, the IAEA received a declaration from the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology informing us that approximately 350 (metric) tons of high explosive material had gone missing,” the IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

“George W. Bush… brags about making America safer has once again failed to deliver,” Kerry said. (AFP)

“The most immediate concern here is that these explosives could have fallen into the wrong hands,” she said.

“We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted,” she said.

The spokeswoman said the US administration was informed on the disappearance of the explosive materials.

“Then on October 15, we informed the multinational forces through the US government with the request for it to take any appropriate action in cooperation with Iraq's interim government.”

“Mr. Baradie (IAEA director) wanted to give them some time to recover the explosives before reporting this loss to the Security Council, but since it's now out, Baradie plans to inform the Security Council today in a letter to the council president,” she said.

The US administration was held responsible for the disappearance of the explosive materials.

“The US forces failed to secure our borders and failed to impose order after the invasion,” an unnamed official of the Iraqi defense ministry told British daily the Guardian Tuesday, October 26.

“Is it any surprise that they overlooked the stocks at Al-Qaqaa?”

US Resentment

Bush ignored the issue.

Bush, for his part, avoided speaking on the issue, with his administration directing its attacks on Baradie himself, while he lashed out at the Democrat for criticizing the US-led war on Iraq.

“Kerry calls America's missions in Iraq a mistake, a diversion, a colossal error. Then he says he's the right man to win the war,” said Bush. “You cannot win a war you do not believe in fighting.”

The US administration hit back at the IAEA head for his move to report a matter of conventional weapons to the Security Council while his job is limited to nuclear weapons.

“Baradie is assigned with the file of nuclear weapons, not conventional ones. Why would the IAEA be that enthusiastic at a matter related to traditional arms only one week before the US presidential elections?” an unnamed US official was quoted by London-based Al-Hayat daily Tuesday, October 26.

With only seven days to go before judgment day for both Bush and Kerry, a new Gallup poll for CNN/USA Tuesday, October 26, showed Bush may have a slight lead but that the election is still too close to call -- 51 percent of likely voters back Bush and 46 percent support Kerry.

The two presidential racers had debated over the security and domestic issues, with Democrat John Kerry scoring better than incumbent Republican George Bush, according to polls carried out following their final TV face-off.

The US war on Iraq and terror-combat policies had dominated the first and second debates between the US president Bush and the Massachusetts senator.

The Bush administration has come under a barrage of criticisms from members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who charged the administration had "shifted justification" of the Iraq invasion from alleged weapons of mass destruction to simply the human rights violations of the ousted Saddam.

A draft report by top US weapons inspectors in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, concluded that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, raising concerns the invasion of the oil-rich country was based on false pretexts.

David Kay, a top US weapons inspector, resigned last month over failure to find any such weapons and said he had come to the conclusion that Iraq had no stockpiles of banned weapons when the United States invaded the country 18 months ago.

He told Reuters on January 23 that he came to realize that there were no such weapons in Iraq. “I don't think they existed,” he said over the phone.

It is the same conclusion reached by former Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, whose team of 1,200 experts searching Iraq for WMD before the Match invasion concluded that no such weapons have been found.

In an earlier interview published March 5, Blix said the invasion was illegal as the United States and Britain “hyped” intelligence to attack the oil-rich country.