- A report by the Pentagon's intelligence agency concluded
last year there was "no reliable evidence" to prove Saddam Hussein
had developed chemical weapons - further undermining claims from Washington
and London that the Iraqi regime presented a genuine threat to the West.
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- A leaked copy of the report by the Defence Intelligence
Agency (DIA) reveals that, despite extensive analysis, experts were unable
definitively to conclude Iraq was either stockpiling or producing weapons
of mass destruction (WMD). The report's contents will add to the considerable
pressure Tony Blair and President George Bush face as their pre-war claims
come under intense scrutiny.
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- "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq
is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has - or
will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities,"
a summary page of the DIA report said. The report does not suggest Iraq
did not have WMD. Indeed, it concludes that Iraq "probably" has
such stockpiles. But its language is far more circumspect than that of
senior Bush administration officials and the President himself, who insisted
Iraq not only had large stocks of WMD but it was capable of delivering
them in weapons.
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- On 19 September, for instance, Donald Rumsfeld, the US
Defence Secretary, told Congress that Iraq had "amassed large, clandestine
stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin and mustard gas".
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- Last summer, speaking to the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain,
Mr Rumsfeld was more explicit. "They have them, and they continue
to develop them, and they have weaponised chemical weapons," he said.
"They've had an active programme to develop nuclear weapons. It's
clear they are a tively developing biological weapons."
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- The DIA report, entitled Iraq: Key Weapons Facilities
- An Operational Support Study, suggests Iraq had developed biological
weapons, though it made clear experts were uncertain of the nature of those
weapons or how many had been developed. "Iraq is assessed to possess
biological agent stockpiles that may be weaponised and ready for use,''
it said. "The size of those stockpiles is uncertain and is subject
to debate. The nature and condition of those stockpiles are unknown."
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- Yesterday, Vice-Admiral Lowell Jacoby, the DIA director,
said the summary page - "a single sentence" - ought not to be
interpreted that the DIA "doubted the existence of the WMD programme".
However, he confirmed the DIA had no hard information on weapons, stockpiles
or locations.
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- Analysts were quick to jump on the summary report, obtained
by Bloomberg News, as evidence the US and Britain had overstated the case
in regard to Iraq's weapons capability.Jonathan Tucker, a former UN weapons
inspector and senior research fellow at the US Institute for Peace, said:
"The DIA report suggests that before the Iraq war, the US intelligence
community did not have hard evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed large
stocks of chemical and biological warfare agents that posed an imminent
threat to US national security."
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- Two months after fighting in Iraq ended, US and British
troops have failed to uncover any conclusive proof that Saddam had developed
or stock-piled WMD. Congress is currently reviewing the pre-war intelligence
and the CIA has ordered its own internal review.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=413164
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