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- Scott Ritter, the former United Nations arms inspector,
has become increasingly irascible in his attempt to challenge America's
case for going to war with Iraq.
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- His ill-temper was all too apparent yesterday when an
interview on the BBC's Today programme on Radio Four turned into a long
exchange of accusations with the presenter, Jim Naughtie, over who was
"playing games".
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- Mr Ritter has become a hate figure in America, where
he is increasingly asked whether he is a "traitor" for arguing
that Saddam Hussein does not pose a threat and that his weapons of mass
destruction have been largely destroyed.
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- But, as the weeks have gone by, he has turned from a
sober dissident with a creditable record on hunting Iraqi weapons into
something of an embittered anti-war activist.
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- Along the way, he has stunned his former boss at the
UN Special Commission on disarming Iraq, Unscom, by publicly calling him
a "liar".
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- Yesterday he called the Iraqi defector, Khidir Hamza,
a "fraud" after the former nuclear scientist claimed that Iraq
could have nuclear weapons by the end of the year.
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- Asked by Mr Naughtie whether "nobody seems to be
telling the truth except you in your own mind", Mr Ritter replied:
"Back off just one second, buddy. Don't start playing this game either.
I have not been contradicted on a single point of fact in four years."If
you want to play this game, then play fair, OK?"
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- He told the programme that America was exerting "an
extreme amount of pressure" to bend the United Nations to its will.
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- "It's not a question of when America will go to
war. We're already at war with Iraq; it's a question of when this war will
enter a large-scale conventional conflict," he said.
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- Mr Ritter, a 42-year-old former US Marine, has undergone
a remarkable political transformation since he led the UN inspectors in
high-profile confrontations with the Iraqi government.
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- He resigned in 1998 complaining that the former Clinton
administration was not tough enough on Saddam. But now that America is
embarking on a campaign to oust Saddam he travels the world declaring that
war cannot be justified.
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- He argues that Iraq's arsenal of nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons has been all but dismantled by UN weapons inspectors;
any missiles remaining are unlikely to work, and the stocks of chemical
and biological weapons have degraded to the point of being useless.
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- "This is a war based on speculative rhetoric, not
fact," he said.
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- * Three French MPs found no evidence that Iraq is producing
or developing weapons of mass destruction, in a visit to its former main
nuclear plant, the official Iraqi News Agency reported.
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- They arrived in Baghdad at the weekend to visit sites
suspected by Washington of producing such weapons.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/0
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