WMD hunt focus on 'intent'
2004-03-31 07:19
Washington - The new leader of the US hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction told Congress on Tuesday he intends to focus on ousted president Saddam Hussein's intentions, in a shift from the past effort to find hidden weapons.
"In its simplest terms, my strategy is to determine the regime's intentions for all the activities ISG has uncovered," Charles Duelfer, the leader of the Iraq Survey Group, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The new strategy represents a change in direction from the past effort to uncover hidden caches of chemical and biological weapons as well as secret programmes to produce them, the main rationale for the US invasion of Iraq.
Deulfer's predecessor, David Kay, said after resigning last month he had come to the conclusion that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled when the United States invaded the country a year ago.
Behind closed doors
Deulfer, who testified on Tuesday behind closed doors, said in a prepared statement that the search by the 1 200-member ISG had been hampered by the "extreme reluctance" of Iraqi scientists and managers to speak freely and the difficulty of sorting through millions of documents.
"We do not know whether Saddam was concealing WMD in the final years or planning to resume production once sanctions were lifted," he said. "We do not know what he ordered his senior ministers to undertake. We do not know how the disparate activities we have identified link together."
"In short, obtaining clear, truthful information from the senior Iraqi leadership has been problematic even at this point in time," he said.