Blair's dossier credible say the experts

By ANNE PENKETH

Ex-arms inspectors and other experts say the British dossier is credible and indicates that Saddam remains a threat to his neighbours.

It details Iraq's continued production of lethal chemical and biological agents that can be loaded into warheads and fired by missiles that could reach beyond Israel to Cyprus.

The deadly payloads could be launched at 45 minutes' notice by 20 missiles which, the report says, have been hidden from the UN inspectors.

The UN monitors had previously reported that only 12 such missiles, with a range of up to 650km, had been hidden.

The report says Iraq "wants to extend the range of its missile systems to over 1000km, enabling it to threaten other regional neighbours". The UN-approved range is 150km.

Former weapons inspectors contacted yesterday also expressed concern about Iraq's attempt to procure uranium from Africa to build a nuclear weapon.

The dossier does not give details on the source, the quantity or the date, but Terence Taylor, head of the US office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said it was "very worrying".

South Africa, Niger and Namibia are the three African uranium producers. Niger legally provided Iraq with 2800kg in 1981-82, when Saddam was still the West's darling.

Taylor, a former UN inspector, said that the uranium mentioned in the report "could have come from anywhere in Africa" given the black-market channels available.

But the significance of the find, he said, was that "the strategic objectives of the regime are unchanged".

A nuclear expert warned that if Iraq was at the stage where it was still buying non-enriched uranium, it was in fact "very close to zero" in assembling a nuclear bomb.

Other procurement activities the report mentions, such as the reference to a large filament-winding machine, also show that Saddam's clandestine programme, which was virtually dismantled by the inspectors in the 1990s, remains in its early stages.

However, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mark Gwozdecky, said that agency inspectors would follow up the British information with interest if they were allowed back in Iraq.

"We are studying the dossier carefully," he said.

One of the threads in the report concerns the effectiveness of the UN sanctions, in force since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The dossier notes that "while sanctions remain effective, Iraq would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon".

If they were lifted, it would take Iraq five years on its own to produce enough fissile material for a bomb. With foreign help, "Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon in between one and two years".

The UN has promised to suspend the sanctions once all Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are eliminated. But it remains doubtful whether the US would agree to ease the sanctions while Saddam remains in power.

Patrick Cockburn, author of Saddam Hussein, an American Obsession, commented yesterday: "The dossier is a good case for rigorous inspections, but not war.

"'Weapons of mass destruction' means that Saddam can massively destroy. In fact, the evidence in there is to say there may be some residual weapons left, but the ability to massively destroy really isn't there."

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INDEPENDENT

Full text of the Blair dossier:

Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction

Further reading

Feature: War with Iraq

Iraq links and resources