US admits Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

THE Bush administration has concluded that fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

The US claimed however that there were signs he had dormant programmes he hoped to revive at a later time.

In a 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of UN agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons. Mr Duelfer also says Iraq had only small research and development programmes for chemical and biological weapons.

As Mr Duelfer puts the finishing touches on his report, he concludes that Saddam had intentions of restarting weapons programmes at some point, after suspicion and inspections from the international community waned. After a year-and-a-half in Iraq, however, the US has found no weapons of mass destruction - its chief argument for overthrowing the regime.

An intelligence official said Mr Duelfer could wrap up the report as soon as this month, but noted it may take time to declassify it. Those who discussed the report inside and outside the US government did so on the condition of anonymity because it contains classified material and is not yet completed.

If the report is released publicly before the November 2 presidential election, Democrats are likely to seize on the document as another opportunity to criticise the Bush administration’s leading argument for war in Iraq and the deteriorating security situation there.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has criticised President George Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq, but has also said he still would have voted to authorise the war even if he had known no weapons of mass destruction would be found there.

Mr Duelfer’s report is expected to be similar to findings reported by his predecessor, David Kay, who presented an interim report to Congress in October. Mr Kay left the post in January, saying: “we were almost all wrong” about Saddam’s weapons programmes.

Mr Duelfer’s report doesn’t reach firm conclusions in all areas. For instance, US officials are still investigating whether Saddam’s fallen regime may have sent chemical weapons equipment and several billion dollars over the border to Syria.