Hunt on for Russian nuclear smuggler: US report

WASHINGTON — Authorities in the ex-Soviet republic of Moldova are hunting the alleged Russian mastermind of a failed plan to sell weapons-grade uranium on the black market, a new US Senate report said Tuesday.

AFP reported in June that Moldova police had arrested six suspects and seized a sample of Uranium-235 in a sting that thwarted a potential customer, described by a top official as "a citizen of a Muslim country in Africa."

But the report by staff for Senator Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, includes the alarming charge that the group also claimed to possess plutonium, far less of which is needed to make a bomb.

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- getting real.