Radioactive wreckage, landmines blight Iraq

Radioactive wreckage and tens of millions of landmines still blight Iraq after decades of war and the deadly violence that engulfed the nation after the 2003 invasion, the environment minister says. Narmin Othman Hasan said a lack of funding and Iraq's fragile security situation was hampering efforts to clean up contaminated sites across the country. She said that only a fraction of tanks and other wartime vehicles contaminated with depleted uranium have been successfully treated and disposed of by the Iraqi authorities. "We have only found 80 percent [of the contaminated sites]... because of the [lack of] security there are still some areas we can't reach," she estimated. It is the legacy of decades of conflict: the 1980-1988 war with neighboring Iran, the 1991 Gulf war, and the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath. The environment ministry's limited budget - around $US100 million compared to the "billions" that are judged necessary to tackle the country's myriad environmental challenges - also got in the way, Hasan said.