25 May 2005 01:17:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, May 24 (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein probably lied about his weapons of mass destruction because of pride and to protect himself from perceived Iranian attacks, a former U.S. and U.N. weapons inspector said on Tuesday.
Charles Duelfer, head of the CIA's Iraq survey group that hunted weapons after the 2003 Gulf War, said the threat from Iran was very real to Saddam, who wanted to create an impression he had more armaments than he really had.
"There was a greater concern than we could appreciate sitting here in Washington of the threat posed by Iran," Duelfer told the Council on Foreign Relations.
"Our gut feeling was not the same as the gut feeling one would have sitting in Baghdad."
Iraq and Iran fought a bloody war from 1980 to 1988 and kept up a low-level conflict after that. Suspicions were rife that Iran was developing weapons of mass destruction.
"Saddam was certainly aware of the WMD assessments of Iran and he created a certain ambiguity about what his capabilities were," Duelfer said.
Duelfer reported last October that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction for more than a decade before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. But he said Saddam hoped in the future to reconstitute his unconventional arms programs and refused to let skilled scientists leave the country.
In a rare on-the-record talk, Duelfer said narcissism and pride played a large role in Saddam's obfuscation of his weapons, since he wanted to be a leader in science and technology, which meant nuclear capabilities.
Duelfer was the deputy executive chairman of UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission, which fielded inspectors in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. Iraq denied it had any unconventional weapons programs but shown proof to the contrary, Saddam's government allowed many to be destroyed but refused to account in detail what happened to all the armaments.
While President George W. Bush used Iraq's alleged weapons to justify the 2003 invasion, Duelfer said Saddam also had a "key intelligence failure" by not understanding that the United States would follow through on its threats after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Saddam in 1991 established as a priority to get U.N. sanctions lifted, imposed after the 1990 Gulf War when his troops invaded Kuwait.
He tried to hide his arms programs, particularly biological and chemical weapons materials that are easier to conceal than nuclear facilities or missiles. Duelfer said Iraq resented inspectors prowling around, actions that immediately created mistrust between Iraqis and the U.N. teams.
But in 1998, Iraq decided that "no matter what they did the United States in particular as not going to climb off on resolving the sanctions issue" and so Baghdad cut off cooperation with inspectors, Duelfer recalled. Saddam then tried to erode the sanctions by exploiting splits among the major powers and bribing politicians around the world.
Richard Norton-Taylor and Michael Howard in Iraq
Wednesday May 25, 2005
The Guardian
It could take at least five years before Iraqi forces are strong enough to impose law and order on the country, the International Institute of Strategic Studies warned yesterday. The thinktank's report said that Iraq had become a valuable recruiting ground for al-Qaida, and Iraqi forces were nowhere near close to matching the insurgency.
John Chipman, IISS director, said the Iraqi security forces faced a "huge task" and the continuing ability of the insurgents to inflict mass casualties "must cast doubt on US plans to redeploy American troops and eventually reduce their numbers".
Insurgents have killed 600 Iraqis since the new government was formed. The IISS report said: "Best estimates suggest that it will take up to five years to create anything close to an effective indigenous force able to impose and guarantee order across the country."
The report said that, on bal ance, US policy over the past year had been effective in emboldening regional players in the Middle East and the Gulf to rally against rogue states.
But it warned that the inspirational effect of the intervention in Iraq on Islamist terrorism was "the proverbial elephant in the living room. From al-Qaida's point of view, [President] Bush's Iraq policies have arguably produced a confluence of propitious circumstances: a strategically bogged down America, hated by much of the Islamic world, and regarded warily even by its allies".
Iraq "could serve as a valuable proving ground for 'blooding' foreign jihadists, and could conceivably form the basis of a second generation of capable al-Qaida leaders ... and middle-management players", the report said.
Yesterday, a statement was placed on the al-Qaida in Iraq website claiming that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born Islamist who has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks, kidnappings and beheadings of foreign hostages, had been injured.
The statement, whose authenticity could not be verified, asked Muslims to pray for his recovery but did not say how or when he was injured. It said: "Let the near and far know that the injury of our leader is an honour, and a cause to close in on the enemies of God, and a reason to increase the attacks against them."
There were reports this month that the US military was investigating whether al-Zarqawi was at a Ramadi hospital and whether he was ill or wounded.
The thinktank report points to US estimates that there are between 12,000 and 20,000 hardcore insurgents in Iraq. It says that Iraqi politicians have been keen to blame the rise in sectarian violence on foreign jihadists. "But they may have overstated their case."
Insurgents demonstrated their ability to hit US forces in the heart of the Iraqi capital yesterday when a military convoy was targeted by a car bomb, killing three US troops.
A fourth US soldier was killed in a drive-by shooting as he sat atop a Bradley fighting vehicle at an observation post in central Baghdad.
The US military also announced yesterday that four soldiers had been killed by a roadside bomb on Monday in Haswa, 30 miles south of the capital, bringing the total number of US fatalities since Sunday to 13.
Yesterday, Iraq's new interior minister, Bayan al-Jabr, who is also a member of the ruling Shia-led alliance, met two prominent Sunni Muslim figures in an effort to reduce sectarian tensions. Officials said the meeting was designed to "curb all hateful attempts aiming to plan sectarian sedition among the Iraqi people".
Toby Dodge, senior fellow at the IISS and expert on Iraq, estimated yesterday that there were about 1,000 foreign fighters in Iraq "perfecting the use of car bombs" and causing more problems across the region, including Saudi Arabia. There seemed to be no "viable exit strategy" for foreign troops.