Saddam got rid of stockpiles but not his deadly ambition

Published on Thursday 7 October 2004 00:11

WHEN George Bush said at the end of the Iraq war that it would be only a matter of time before stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were discovered, few doubted him.

But after a hunt lasting more than a year by the 1,400 British, United States and Australian military experts who formed the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), no such weapons have been found.

Yesterday, Charles Duelfer, the ISG chief, confirmed what many people had come to accept - that Iraq had no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons before last year’s US-led invasion, and its nuclear programme had decayed since the 1991 Gulf war.

He went on to raise the frightening prospect that, in the chaos of post-war Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons experts could be forming links with insurgents fighting the US-led forces.

In a testimony prepared for the US Senate armed services committee, Mr Duelfer said Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme had deteriorated since the 1991 Gulf war, but he added that Saddam had not abandoned his nuclear ambitions.

By the time of the war in 2003, he said, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in months and nerve agent in less than a year.

"We have not come across explicit guidance from Saddam on this point, yet it was an inherent consequence of his decision to develop a domestic chemical production capacity," he said.

Mr Duelfer went on: "Despite Saddam’s expressed desire to retain the knowledge of his nuclear team, and his attempts to retain some key parts of the programme [after 1991], during the course of the following 12 years, Iraq’s ability to produce a weapon decayed.

"While it is clear that Saddam wanted a long-range missile, there was little work done on warheads. It is apparent that he drew the line at that point ... so long as sanctions remained."

Mr Duelfer added that a new risk had emerged since he last briefed the US congress, with possible connections between chemical weapons experts from Saddam’s former regime and the insurgents.

"I believe we got ahead of this problem through a series of raids throughout the spring and summer. I am convinced we successfully contained a problem before it matured into a major threat," he said.

"Nevertheless, it points to the problem that the dangerous expertise developed by the previous regime could be transferred to other hands."

Mr Duelfer said the world was better off with Saddam ousted from power.

"In my opinion there was a risk of Saddam Hussein in charge of a country with that amount of resources and that amount of potential for both good and evil," he said.

He said there was an "enormous difference" between what Iraq was under Saddam and what it could be.

Mr Duelfer found that Saddam, hoping to end UN sanctions, gradually began ending prohibited weapons programmes starting in 1991. But as Iraq started receiving money through the UN oil-for-food programme in the late 1990s, and as enforcement of the sanctions weakened, Saddam was able to take steps to rebuild his military, such as acquiring parts for missile systems.

Mr Duelfer’s team found no written plans by Saddam’s regime to pursue banned weapons if UN sanctions ended. Instead, the inspectors based their findings that Saddam hoped to reconstitute his programmes on interviews with Saddam after his capture, as well as talks with other top Iraqis.

The inspectors found Saddam was particularly concerned about the threat posed by Iran, the country’s enemy in a 1980-88 war.

Saddam said he would meet Iran’s threat by any means necessary, which Mr Duelfer understood to mean weapons of mass destruction.

Saddam believed the use of chemical weapons against Iran prevented Iraq’s defeat in that war. He also was prepared to use such weapons in the first Gulf War of 1991 if coalition forces had tried to topple him.

Mr Duelfer’s key conclusion tallied with that of his predecessor, David Kay, who said when he stepped down in January that no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons existed in Iraq when the US-led coalition went to war.

At the time of his resignation, Mr Kay said the intelligence upon which Britain and the US had based much of their case for invading Iraq was wrong.

"It turns out we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing," he said. "I don’t think they existed."

As the months passed and the ISG failed to find the merest hint of a banned weapons programme, doubts began to emerge about the accuracy of the pre-war claims.

By the time the first leaks of the ISG report emerged last month, the White House and Downing Street had distanced themselves from their belief, so adamantly held 18 months previously, that Iraq was hiding WMD weapons.