- David Kay, the chief United States weapons hunter in
Iraq, has told the CIA he will not return to his post.
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- The decision comes as a further setback to the coalition
hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a search that has so far
been fruitless.
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- Fears that Mr Kay might quit before the hunt had been
completed emerged last month amid rumours he was frustrated at the running
of the Iraq Survey Group, the 1,400-strong team of weapons hunters he headed.
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- US officials said last month Mr Kay had told the administration
he was considering leaving the job as early as this month, citing family
obligations.
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- Officials said that when he took the job in June, Mr
Kay had fully expected he would quickly find the evidence to back up the
administration's pre-war claims about Iraqi weapons.
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- But in a preliminary report in October, his team reported
finding no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons.
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- Other sources suggested Mr Kay was frustrated some of
his staff were shifted to the counter-insurgency front.
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- "He has told the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence
George Tenet] that he doesn't want to go back. They have been trying to
get him to stay," a US government source said yesterday.
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- It was unclear if the CIA had had any success in persuading
Mr Kay, who came back to the US for the Christmas holidays, to stay on
the job, the source said.
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- Mr Kay declined to comment and referred questions about
his status to the CIA. A spokesman for the agency yesterday also refused
to comment.
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- Mr Kay, a former UN weapons inspector, was appointed
as a special adviser to lead the hunt for biological and chemical weapons
and any signs of a revived nuclear weapons programme.
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- A US official yesterday said his status was "up
in the air". Major General Keith Dayton of the Defence Intelligence
Agency, who heads the Iraq Survey Group under Mr Kay's guidance, was returning
to Iraq this week to continue the weapons search.
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- News of Mr Kay's departure comes a week after the US
admitted it had withdrawn 400 weapons inspectors from Iraq, saying their
work there was done.
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- The team was primarily composed of technical experts.
Its work included searching weapons depots and other sites for missile
launchers that might have been used with illicit weapons.
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- The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last week
issued a report that accused the Bush administration in the run-up to the
war of making the threat from Iraq sound more dire than the facts warranted.
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- The report's authors said they did not expect any large
stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons to be found.
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- ©2004 Scotsman.com
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- http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=58672004
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