U.N.: Iraq had no WMD after 1994
Tue Mar 2, 7:28 AM ET
By Bill Nichols, USA TODAY
A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they
now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any
significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N.
diplomats who have seen the document.
The historical review of inspections in Iraq is
the first outside study to confirm the recent
conclusion by David Kay, the former U.S.
chief inspector, that Iraq had no banned
weapons before last year's U.S-led invasion.
It also goes further than prewar U.N. reports,
which said no weapons had been found but
noted that Iraq had not fully accounted for
weapons it was known to have had at the
end of the Gulf War in
1991.
The report, to be outlined to the U.N.
Security Council as early as Friday, is
based on information gathered over more
than seven years of U.N. inspections in Iraq
before the 2003 war, plus postwar findings
discussed publicly by Kay.
Kay reported in October that his team found
"dozens of WMD-related program activities"
that Iraq was required to reveal to U.N.
inspectors but did not. However, he said he
found no actual WMDs.
The study, a quarterly report on Iraq from
U.N. inspectors, notes that the U.S. teams'
inability to find any weapons after the war
mirrors the experience of U.N. inspectors
who searched there from November 2002
until March 2003.
Many Bush administration officials were
harshly critical of the U.N. inspection efforts
in the months before the war. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in August
2002 that inspections "will be a sham."
The Bush administration also pointedly
declined U.N. offers to help in the postwar
weapons hunt, preferring instead to use
U.S. inspectors and specialists from other
coalition countries such as Britain and
Australia.
But U.N. reports submitted to the Security
Council before the war by Hans Blix, former
chief U.N. arms inspector, and Mohamed
ElBaradei, head of the U.N.'s nuclear
watchdog agency, have been largely
validated by U.S. weapons teams. The common findings:
Iraq's nuclear weapons program was dormant.
No evidence was found to suggest Iraq possessed chemical or biological
weapons. U.N. officials believe the weapons were destroyed by U.N.
inspectors or Iraqi officials in the years after the 1991 Gulf War.
Iraq was attempting to develop missiles capable of exceeding a
U.N.-mandated limit of 93 miles.
Demetrius Perricos, the acting executive chairman of the U.N. inspection
teams, said in an interview that the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq
since the war undercuts administration criticism of the U.N.'s search
before the war.
"You cannot say that only the Americans or the British or the
Australians currently inspecting in Iraq are the clever inspectors - and
the Americans and the British and the Australians that we had were
not," he said.
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