IRAQ: Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons before last year's US-led invasion and its nuclear programme had decayed since the 1991 Gulf War, a weapons inspector appointed by the Bush administration said yesterday.
The assessment contrasted with statements by President 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," Mr 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.
He said Iraq's nuclear weapons program had deteriorated since the 1991 Gulf War, but he said Saddam did not abandon his nuclear ambitions. Mr Duelfer said a risk that has emerged since he last briefed 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," Mr 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.
Mr Duelfer said that by the time of the war in 2003, Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agent in months and nerve agent in less than a year.
"We have not come across explicit guidance from Saddam on this point, yet it was an inherent consequence of his decision to develop a domestic chemical production capacity," he said.
Mr Duelfer added that "despite Saddam's expressed desire to retain the knowledge of his nuclear team, and his attempts to retain some key parts of the program [after 1991], during the course of the following 12 years Iraq's ability to produce a weapon decayed."
He briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee behind closed doors about his report in the morning and testified later at an open Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. "While it is clear that Saddam wanted a long-range missile, there was little work done on warheads. It is apparent that he drew the line at that point ... so long as sanctions remained," Mr Duelfer said, adding that one of Saddam's priorities was to escape UN sanctions.
Mr Duelfer's key conclusion tallied with that of his predecessor, Dr David Kay, who said when he stepped down in January that no large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons existed in Iraq when the United States went to war.