Saddam's mighty weapons 'may all have been a bluff'

The man given the task of finding Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction delivers his initial findings tomorrow and is expected to say that Iraq’s threat to launch chemical or biological attacks may have been a bluff.

David Kay will tell United States Congressmen at private hearings that Saddam may have pretended that he had distributed WMDs to his most loyal commanders in a bid to deter an invasion, it was reported.

Mr Kay is head of the 1,200-strong CIA-led Iraq Survey Group which is scouring the country for the weapons which were the basis for the invasion.

The lack of any significant discoveries so far has led to criticism of the Bush Administration and of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was recently branded untrustworthy by 64% of voters in an opinion poll.

But Mr Kay is also expected to tell the House and Senate intelligence committees that Saddam never abandoned his attempts to develop chemical and biological weapons and also wanted to re-start his nuclear programme, the Washington Post says it has learned.

Mr Kay will say in the interim report that after United Nations Weapons Inspectors pulled out of Iraq in 1998, Saddam continued to buy supplies which could be used to produce banned weapons.

He will set out the lengths to which Saddam’s regime went to deceive the weapons inspectors, including the hiding of documents and materials.

One Iraqi scientist has told the Iraq Survey Group that he and his colleagues were were ordered by Saddam to record interviews with weapons inspectors, in defiance of a Security Council resolution calling for the meetings to be unmonitored.

Weapons technicians and scientists were also banned from leaving the country, the scientist said.

The Survey Group also believes it has evidence that Iraq defied a UN resolution restricting missile ranges and the development of missile fuels.

Mr Kay’s interim report goes on to examine the possibility that Saddam may have bluffed to make his regime appear more dangerous than it really was.

The deception probably involved moving strategic people and equipment around the country and making threatening public statements.

The House of Representatives intelligence committee is currently exploring the same theory, the Washington Post reported.

One possibility was that Iraq may have destroyed many of its weapons before the 1991 Gulf War.

More weaponry and facilities were destroyed by UN in the 1990s, after the war.