- "The refusal to allow ISG (Iraq Survey Group)
experts
to read a report on their own work adds weight to suspicions that the
report
has been manipulated. 'They're under huge pressure to come up with
whatever,'
the ex-colleague said."
-
- WASHINGTON -- The test tube
of botulinum presented by Washington and London as evidence that Saddam
Hussein had been developing and concealing weapons of mass destruction,
was found in an Iraqi scientist's home refrigerator, where it had been
sitting for 10 years, it emerged yesterday.
-
- David Kay, the expert appointed by the CIA to lead the
hunt for weapons, told a congressional committee last week that the vial
of botulinum had been "hidden" at the scientist's home, and could
be used to "covertly surge production of deadly weapons".
-
- Since then, the discovery of the vial has been at the
heart of the debate over prewar claims that Iraq had an arsenal of banned
weapons.
-
- It was cited in justifications of the invasion by
President
George Bush and by Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who described
botulinum toxin as "15,000 times more toxic than the nerve agent
VX".
-
- Mr Straw claimed after the report came out that it
presented
further "conclusive and incontrovertible" evidence that Saddam
had been in breach of UN resolutions. He said the report confirmed how
"dangerous and deceitful" the regime was and that the military
action was "both justified and essential to remove the
dangers".
-
- The US state department even argued that the discovery
of the test tube meant that Mr Kay's Iraq Survey Group (ISG), contrary
to its own claim, had found a weapon of mass destruction. However, newly
disclosed details about the circumstances in which the botulinum vial was
found, have raised fresh questions about its significance.
-
- While presenting his progress report to Congress, Mr
Kay did not say when and where the botulinum had been hidden but he told
a television interviewer on Sunday that the scientist involved said he
was asked to hide the botulinum in his refrigerator at home in 1993. Iraq
admitted pursuing a biological weapons programme to UN inspectors two years
later. It is unclear whether the Iraqi scientist had received any orders
from the regime after that date.
-
- It is also unclear whether the vial contained the
bacteria
botulinum, from which the toxin is drawn, or the toxin itself, as Mr Kay
claimed in interviews over the weekend.
-
- Furthermore, the most lethal form of the germ is the
A strain, while the form found by the ISG was the B strain.
-
- Mr Kay admitted that "we have not yet found shiny,
pointy things that I would call a weapon", but he insisted there was
plenty of evidence of Saddam's intentions to reconstitute weapons
programmes
once free of international scrutiny. He said the scientist who had the
botulinum toxin in his refrigerator had also been entrusted with many more
strains of biological weapons, including anthrax, but had given them back
"because he said they were too dangerous; he had small children in
the house".
-
- More evidence of such programmes was included in a
200-page
classified version of the 13-page report made public, but experts in the
ISG, including former UN inspectors, have so far not been allowed to read
the classified version, according to one of their former colleagues.
-
- The refusal to allow ISG experts to read a report on
their own work adds weight to suspicions that the report has been
manipulated.
"They're under huge pressure to come up with whatever," the
ex-colleague
said.
-
- Mr Kay has said privately the report's publication was
held up for about two weeks while more work was done on it at CIA
headquarters.
-
- He says the ISG will need up to nine months to complete
its search, and his 1,200-strong team is following up an abundance of
leads,
including the claim by the Iraqi scientist that he had been asked in 1993
to look after anthrax and other biological agents.
-
- Mr Kay also said the ISG had found some evidence to
support
the British government's prewar claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium
in Africa. That claim had been undermined by the discovery that a letter
purporting to be an offer by the Niger government to sell uranium to
Baghdad
turned out to be a fake.
-
- But Mr Kay said: "We have found a document that
is an unsolicited - as far as we can tell - proposal to sell uranium to
them from another African country, not Niger. And we're continuing- that's
an active area of a current investigation."
-
- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2003
-
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1057558,00.html
|
