UN NUCLEAR EXPERTS headed to Iraq to try to account for nuclear materials from a power plant. Fear is that the looted materials will sell on the black market as the basis for "dirty bombs".

Dr. Hamed Al-Bahili, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who helped design and open Tuwaitha in 1968, was one of the first on the scene after fleeing Iraqi troops abandoned the site.

Raising his hand 2 inches above the linoleum floor in his living room, Al-Bahili said: "The uranium was all over the floor - all over the ground outside. Piles of it. We poured cement over it inside the rooms because there was no other way to handle it."

Al-Bahili said he pleaded with impoverished villagers in the area not to touch the blue barrels the IAEA had used to store the uranium, "but there were thousands of people - they just kept coming," he said in an interview Thursday at his Baghdad home.

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