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Washington has spirited 1.8 tons of enriched uranium out of Iraq for safekeeping, more than a year after looters stole it from a U.N.-sealed facility left unguarded by U.S. troops, U.S. and U.N. officials said on Wednesday.

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham called the shipment to a secure Department of Energy facility "a major achievement for the Bush administration's goal to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists."

"It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons," Abraham said in a printed statement making no reference to the looting.

Washington suspects Iraq's neighbors Iran and Syria of harboring ambitions to develop nuclear arms.

The Tuwaitha nuclear complex was dismantled in the early 1990s after the first Gulf War. But tonnes of nuclear materials remained there, under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, until the second Gulf War, when it was left unguarded by the U.S.-led invading forces and looted by Iraqi civilians.

In June 2003, after repeated IAEA warnings that the looted materials could be used to make weapons, an embarrassed United States allowed an IAEA team to return to the site to try to gather them up.

Alarms had been raised as villagers near Tuwaitha, especially children, showed symptoms of radiation sickness.

The IAEA team managed to account for all but some 90 pounds (40 kg) of the 1.8 tonnes of uranium, which had been enriched to 2.6 percent uranium-235. That level of enrichment makes the material suitable for use in a dirty bomb or -- with further enrichment -- a nuclear weapon.

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