No banned weapons found in Iraq, says CIA adviser

By RUPERT CORNWELL in Washington and PAUL WAUGH

Five months after the end of the war in Iraq, a CIA adviser has admitted that his 1,200-strong team has discovered none of Saddam Hussein's alleged stocks of chemical and biological arms.

"We have not yet found stocks of weapons", David Kay, the head of the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group said in a first report to closed-door sessions of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, three months after the arrival of the ISG in Iraq.

Mr Kay insisted that avenues of information on which his group was working might come up with concrete proof, and he argued the bulkiest material it was searching for could be hidden in spaces little larger than a two-car garage. He admitted: "Much evidence has been irretrievably lost".

He also blamed the slow progress on the compartmentalisation of Iraq's WMD activities, the widespread destruction of materials and documents before the war, and looting of suspect sites afterwards. Some equipment may have been sent out of the country, before and during the war.

Tony Blair and Jack Straw attempted to defend the war last night by claiming that the Survey Group would prove Saddam Hussein had breached UN resolutions which demanded full disclosure of his WMD programmes.

In Bournemouth at the Labour Party conference, Mr Blair stressed the report is only an interim finding. But the meagre results seem bound to reinforce contentions the US and British governments, wilfully or by error, grossly exaggerated the scale and the imminence of any threat from Saddam Hussein.

Mr Kay could do no better than draw three broad conclusions from his endeavours.

First, he reported that the deposed Iraqi leader had "not given up his intentions and aspirations of continuing to acquire WMD", and resuming programmes once sanctions were lifted.

Second, had the coalition not invaded in March, the regime would have continued to develop missiles with a range of up to 1,000km, considerably more than the 150km maximum permitted by the UN.

Finally, the report states that there were, at minimum, secret research and development activities for chemical and biological weapons, under the umbrella of the Iraqi intelligence services. These would have left Saddam with a trained corps of specialists, capable of moving swiftly ahead once circumstances permitted.

But the evidence unearthed thus far, on the basis of what Mr Kay told Congress, does not start to measure up to the apocalyptic warnings brandished by Tony Blair and President Bush before the conflict.

On nuclear weapons, Mr Kay is equally downbeat. The team had found no evidence Saddam took any significant steps to actually build weapons or produce fissile materials since 1998 - when UN weapons inspectors left the country for the last time before their brief return in the three months before war began on 20 March.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, repeated his conviction last night that Saddam posed a real threat, even though it was not certain whether the threat was imminent or long term.

Mr Straw said "We did talk more broadly about the nature of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The Prime Minister, I recall very clearly, said he couldn't say whether the threat would arise this week, next week, next year or in five years. But the threat was very clearly there and nothing I have seen or heard in the months and years since Iraq has been an issue has moved me from that judgment."

Senior critics such as Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary, said that the failure by the ISG to find any actual weapons or agents proved that Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, should have been given more time to carry out his task.

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Herald Feature: Iraq