Embarrassing lack of weapons of mass destruction

The United States Government should be "embarrassed" over the apparent failure to uncover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main justification for going to war, retired intelligence officials said.

"It's going to be very embarrassing when it turns out they have nothing to declare," said former defence intelligence analyst Eugene Betit.

Another, former CIA station chief Ray Close, said: "I'm hoping they will be embarrassed into acknowledging a role for some independent body. And who could it be but the United Nations?"

As the "smoking gun" continued to elude US sleuths, the chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix said his team was ready to get back to finish the job but not to work under a new US-led disarmament effort.

"We're not dogs on a leash," Blix said. "We have a mandate from the Security Council, and credibility requires that we have independent judgment."

Adding to the pressure, Russia, a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, said it would not support the lifting of UN sanctions against Iraq unless UN inspectors confirmed the absence of weapons of mass destruction.

But Washington has so far rejected such calls, and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sought to deflect concerns that evidence could be planted.

"The [US search] teams have been trained in chain of control, really like a crime scene," Rumsfeld told Pentagon staff. He said, "They will have people with them who will validate things, they will have the ability to take pictures, and to make sure that the control over any piece of evidence is as clear as it possibly can be."

Rumsfeld warned however, "That will not stop certain countries, and certain types of people from claiming, inaccurately, that it was planted.

"I don't think we'll discover anything. I think what will happen is we'll discover people who will tell us where to go find it.

"It is not like a treasure hunt where you just run around looking everywhere, hoping you find something."

A Pentagon official said the United States had enlisted about 10 former UN weapons inspectors to help in the search. But some former UN inspectors said the US military's efforts had made a slow start, increasing the chances that some could be spirited out of Iraq and sold to terrorist groups.

A US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "approximately 10 former UN inspectors and personnel" have been "applying their experience and expertise to the effort". The official said some were inside Iraq and others were preparing to go there.

The official said several teams from inside the US Government have been in the region since the war's start, and are "deploying to suspect sites across Iraq to perform analysis of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] related finds".

More than two dozen sites have been visited "and the pace of such visits is expanding," the official said.

Before the war President George W. Bush said Iraq posed a threat because Saddam's Government had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, which Bush said justified military action.

Terence Taylor, a chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1993 to 1997, said: "There is pressure to find something pretty quickly, of course. I have no doubt something will be found, but it may take a little while."

Former UN inspector David Kay said he has talked to US officials about how to organise the search, recommended others to be recruited into the effort, and volunteered to take part "under the right set of circumstances".

But he said the military's effort has had a slow start and some former UN inspectors involved were "sitting on the sidelines".

"I think this should have been a much higher priority task because the administration may end up proving there were weapons of mass destruction there but not being able to give anyone any assurance that they actually have identified, found and controlled all of those weapons," said Kay, the former UN chief nuclear weapons inspector who led efforts in Iraq after the Gulf War to learn its nuclear arms production capability.

Kay worried about "some Iraqi colonel who thinks he has no future in Iraq but knows if he takes a chemical or biological weapon or some of the technology to Damascus he can sell it to Hizbollah, or you name the terrorist group, for US$50,000." (About $90,000.)

Amy Smithson, a leading independent expert on chemical and biological weapons programmes, said former inspectors can provide the US military expertise about the ins and outs of Iraqi programmes, as well as lending more legitimacy to the effort.

UN resolutions adopted after the 1991 Gulf War prohibited Iraq from possessing chemical, biological and nuclear arms programmes.

"This is a mammoth effort. They need all the help they can get," said Smithson, who directs the Chemical and Biological Weapons Non-proliferation Project at the Henry Stimson Centre.

"Not only are these people well familiar with the tricks that the Iraqi regime has used in the past, but they know the programmes."

An entire US Army artillery brigade was assigned the task of performing detective work at sites where the Iraqis might have placed these weapons.

In addition to these approximately 5000 soldiers, US special forces were enlisted to help.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war