- (AFP) -- A 400-strong US military team that has been
searching for illicit weapons in Iraq have been withdrawn after finding
nothing of substance, although a separate group looking for weapons of
mass destruction still remains in the country, The New York Times reported.
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- "They picked up everything that was worth picking
up," one US official told the daily, referring to the Joint Captured
Materiel Exploitation Group, made up of technical experts headed by an
unidentified Australian brigadier.
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- The team's task included searching weapons depots and
other sites for missile launchers that might have been used with illicit
weapons, another also unidentified Defense Department official was quoted
as saying.
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- The withdrawal of the 400-member military team was seen
by some military officials as a sign that the US government may no longer
expect to uncover chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, the daily said.
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- A separate military team tasked with disposing of chemical
or biological weapons in Iraq remains part of the 1,400-member Iraq Survey
Group that has been searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq since
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown, a member of the survey group
said.
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- However he told the paper that the group in question,
known as Task Force D/E, for disablement and elimination, was "still
waiting for something to dispose of."
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- In October, an interim report by Iraq Survey Group leader
David Kay said his search had yielded no weapons of mass destruction, which
President George W. Bush had cited as justification for war against Iraq.
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- Kay, however, said documents found in Iraq indicated
that Saddam intended to develop illicit weapons and may have retained the
capacity to do so. Kay has yet to announce when he will turn in his final
report on the matter.
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- The Washington Post on Wednesday said interviews with
Iraqi scientists and investigators indicate that Saddam's regime concealed
arms research that never went beyond the planning stage, although it engaged
in "abundant deception" about its ambitions.
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- "The broad picture emerging from the investigation
to date," said the Post, "suggests that, whatever its desire,
Iraq did not posess the wherewithal to build a forbidden armory on anything
like the scale it had before the 1991 Persian Gulf War."
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- Despite mounting evidence that Iraq lacked weapons of
mass destruction, the US government insists the search for banned weapons
in Iraq is not over and points to thousands of seized documents that it
says may yet lead to a hidden jackpot.
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