KEY POINTS:
An Iraqi defector made up his claim that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons, a threat cited by the Bush Administration as a key reason for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the American news programme 60 Minutes said yesterday.
Rafid Ahmed Alwan, codenamed "Curve Ball" in intelligence circles, claimed to be a chemical engineering expert but was actually an alleged thief, the programme said.
He arrived at a German refugee centre in 1999.
"To bolster his asylum case and increase his importance, he told officials he was a star chemical engineer who had been in charge of a facility at Djerf al Nadaf that was making mobile biological weapons."
The report, a culmination of a two-year investigation by journalist Bob Simon, is due to be broadcast on the CBS network on Monday.
