WASHINGTON, 8 March 2004 — A ship left Libya Saturday with the last of Libya’s known material related to nuclear weapons program, a US government spokesman told reporters. The cargo vessel was loaded with 500 tons of equipment and materials, said Sean McCormack, a spokesman for US President George W. Bush.

In December, Libya agreed to abandon all efforts to develop and build chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. In an agreement with the United States and Britain, Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi said he would dismantle the illicit weapons programs with the oversight of United Nations agencies and Western governments.

Speaking from Bush’s private ranch in Texas, McCormack said that the ship carried “all known remaining equipment” from the Libyan nuclear program, include centrifuge parts and uranium conversion equipment. Also on board were all of Libya’s long-range missiles. He also said that Libya’s known stocks of mustard gas had been moved to a single, secure warehouse.

On Friday, the UN’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague announced that Libya had completed the first phase of destroying its chemical weapons capability with the supervised destruction of 3,300 aerial bombs designed to disperse chemical weapons agents.