Report concludes Iraq had no WMD

8.15am

WASHINGTON - Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons before last year's United States-led invasion and its nuclear programme had decayed since the 1991 Gulf War, the chief US weapons inspector said.

The assessment contrasted with statements by president George W Bush before the invasion, when he cited a growing threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the reason for overthrowing president Saddam Hussein.

"I still do not expect that militarily significant WMD stocks are cached in Iraq," Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the hunt for weapons of mass destruction, said in testimony prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee obtained by Reuters.

Iraq's nuclear weapons programme had deteriorated since the 1991 Gulf War, but Saddam did not abandon his nuclear ambitions, he said.

"The analysis shows that despite Saddam's expressed desire to retain the knowledge of his nuclear team, and his attempts to retain some key parts of the programme, during the course of the following 12 years (after 1991) Iraq's ability to produce a weapon decayed," Duelfer said.

The issue has figured prominently in the campaign for the November 2 US presidential election, with Democratic challenger John Kerry saying Bush rushed to war without allowing UN inspections enough time to investigate Iraq's armaments.

Bush, who has given varying justifications for the war, said in a speech in Pennsylvania on Wednesday that the concern was that terrorists would get banned weapons from Saddam.

"There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," Bush said.

"In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take," he said, referring to the 2001 attacks on the United States attributed to al Qaeda.

Duelfer said a risk that has emerged since he last briefed the US Congress on the status of the WMD hunt was a connection between chemical weapons experts from Saddam's former regime with insurgents fighting the US-led forces now in Iraq.

"I believe we got ahead of this problem through a series of raids throughout the spring and summer. I am convinced we successfully contained a problem before it matured into a major threat," Duelfer said.

"Nevertheless, it points to the problem that the dangerous expertise developed by the previous regime could be transferred to other hands," he said.

Some chemical weapons that have been uncovered were all old and predated the first Gulf war, Duelfer said.

By the time of the US-led invasion in 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in months and nerve agent in less than a year, he said.

But on its nuclear programme, Iraq at the time of the invasion was "years" from developing a nuclear weapon, a US official familiar with the Duelfer report said.

White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in 2002 evoked a potential nuclear threat when she said: "We don't want 'the smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud."

A key prewar discovery that US officials cited as evidence that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear programme was a shipment of aluminum tubes seized in 2001.

But the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the tubes appeared to have been for use in rockets as Iraq had declared, rather than for a nuclear weapons programme.

"By the end of 1991 they had gotten rid of just about everything including missiles," the official said. "We found nothing which reflected production after 1991," he said.

The WMD hunt uncovered labs controlled by Iraqi intelligence that showed production of small amounts of poisons, including ricin -- but for use in assassinations not military weapons.

The Duelfer report, which includes assessments based on FBI interrogations of Saddam, said the former Iraqi leader intended to rebuild his weapons capabilities once UN sanctions were lifted.

Five facts on the Iraq Survey Group (ISG):

* The 1400-strong Iraqi Survey Group is a fact-finding mission looking for weapons of mass destruction developed by Saddam Hussein -- the reason cited by Washington for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

* The American-sponsored ISG is made up of American, British and Australian inspectors and took over work previously done by the United Nations -- the UN Special Commission (June 1991 to Dec 1998) and the UN Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (Nov 2002 to March 2003).

* The group is headed by Charles Duelfer. His predecessor, David Kay, resigned in January 2004, saying he didn't believe there were large stockpiles of WMD in Iraq.

* The ISG issued an Interim Progress Report in October 2003 stating "WMD-related programme activities and significant amounts of equipment" had been found but no actual WMD.

* The ISG, which has offices in Baghdad, Qatar and Washington also undertakes other tasks, including collecting information on terrorism, war crimes and prisoner of war issues.

- REUTERS

Iraq's WMD: Key Findings [PDF]

Herald Feature: Iraq