Saddam 'had no WMD stockpile'

2004-09-17 09:29

Katherine Pfleger Shrader

Washington - Drafts of a report from the top US inspector in Iraq conclude there were no weapons of mass destruction stockpiles, but say there were signs that fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to people familiar with the findings.

In a 1 500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of UN agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons.

Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons.

As Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programs at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned.

After a year and a half in Iraq, however, the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction - its chief argument for overthrowing the regime.

An intelligence official said Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month, but noted it may take time to declassify it. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the government did so on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.

If the report is released publicly before the November 2 election, Democrats are likely to seize on the document as another opportunity to criticise the Bush administration's leading argument for war in Iraq and the deteriorating security situation there.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has criticised the president's handling of the war in Iraq, but has also said he still would have voted to authorise the war even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be found there.

Duelfer's report is expected to be similar to findings reported by his predecessor, David Kay, who presented an interim report to Congress in October. Kay left the post in January, saying, "We were almost all wrong" about Saddam's weapons programs.

The new analysis, however, is expected to fall between the position of the Bush administration before the war - portraying Saddam as a grave threat - and the declarative statements Kay made after he resigned.

It will also add more evidence and flesh out Kay's October findings. Then, Kay said the Iraq Survey Group had only uncovered limited evidence of secret chemical and biological weapons programs, but he found substantial evidence of an Iraqi push to boost the range of its ballistic missiles beyond prohibited ranges.

He also said there was almost no sign that a significant nuclear weapons project was under way.

The Iraq Survey Group has been working since the summer of 2003 to find Saddam's weapons and better understand his prohibited programs. More than a thousand civilian and military weapons specialists, translators and other experts have been devoted to the effort.

- AP