Swedes find signs of Saddam's weapons?
Arms experts claim manufacturing program running as late as 2002
Posted: August 4, 2003
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
During a secret visit in June, Swedish arms experts claim they discovered evidence of an Iraqi program to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
Government and military officials of the Scandinavian country, which opposed the war, minimized the claims and criticized the visit as unauthorized, the Irish Examiner reported.
The paper said two chemical and biological weapons experts were in Iraq to help a team from the Monaco-based World Television Network evaluate information it had obtained about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons program, according to Aake Sellstroem of the Swedish Defense Research Agency, who authorized the visit.
Sellstroem said the information indicated Iraq had a chemical and biological weapons program in operation as late as last year but did not reveal whether any arms were produced.
The researcher, who heads the agency's weapons of mass destruction research unit, said he hastily authorized the visit and regretted not informing his superiors or the government about it, the Irish paper said.
A spokesman for Sellstroem's agency, Hans Rehnvall, said the two weapons experts, who were not identified, failed to find a "smoking gun," the Examiner reported.
"They didn’t regard the results as particularly surprising or dramatic," he said. "A piece of the puzzle among many others."
A report on the findings will be prepared by the agency, Rehnvall said, but cannot be released until after the television documentary is aired, due to an agreement.
Wera Maria Cedrell, producer of the documentary, said documents purchased from former Iraqi officials included maps of sites where material for chemical or biological weapons might be buried.
The Swedish researchers were among several European experts who helped evaluate the documents, Cedrell said. |
