Iraqi weapons hunt stopped after car bomb attack

Charles Duelfer

The American who led the hunt for Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction says the investigation was cut short after he was targeted by militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in an attack that left two people dead.

The head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, said this week that his investigation into the possible transfer of such weapons to Syria had been wound up because of the "declining security situation".

But in an interview with the Independent, Duelfer said Zarqawi had claimed responsibility for the car-bomb attack on his convoy on November 6.

"A car-bomb tried to get me and my follow car," Duelfer said. "Two of my guards were killed and one was badly wounded. My hearing's not been right since."

Duelfer, in his 84-page addendum to the final report running to thousands of pages, concluded there was no evidence that weapons had been moved to Syria by Saddam Hussein.

The report contradicted claims by Donald Rumsfeld, who asserted after the war that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq might be explained by their possible transfer to Syria.

Duelfer reported just before November's American presidential election that his 1500-strong group had found "no evidence" that Saddam had possessed chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

His dossier demolished the claims by the British Government and Bush Administration issued before the Iraq war that Saddam's weapons were a threat to the US and Britain.

Duelfer yesterday denied suggestions, including one from an Australian colleague, weapons inspector Rod Barton, that he had been subjected to political pressure by the US or British authorities.

"There was political interest, but that's not the same as political pressure."

- INDEPENDENT