France may discuss fixing bombed Iraqi reactor

By With Analysis From Monitor Correspondents Around The World; Edited By Susan Garland

February 22, 1982

Beirut

France's External Relations Minister Claude Cheysson arrived in Iraq Feb. 21 and was expected to discuss the rebuilding of a French-built nuclear reactor destroyed in an Israeli air raid last June.

Official sources in Paris said France wants to fuel any new reactor with a low-grade uranium that could not be used to make an atomic bomb, but Iraq wants the original higher-grade fuel to be used. Israel said it attacked the reactor to prevent Iraq from making a bomb.