US inspector touts Iraqi sanctions

WASHINGTON -- David Kay, the Bush administration's chief weapons investigator in Iraq, said yesterday he believes United Nations inspections and international sanctions put in place after the 1991 Gulf War were more effective in frustrating Saddam Hussein's plans for weapons of mass destruction than the United States had realized.

Kay told reporters that the 1,200 members of his Iraq Survey Group have been surprised "at how often" top Iraqi scientists and policy makers "refer to the impact of sanctions" in their interviews with the Americans. Kay added that it "may be necessary to reassess what we thought" about the effectiveness of the UN effort.

He also said Iraq had paid North Korea $10 million before the war for equipment to make ballistic missiles, but the deal fell through.

While Democrats said the Kay report, released Thursday, demonstrated that the decision to invade Iraq was premature, President Bush pointed to the same text yesterday as evidence that Hussein posed a danger that had to be removed. Twice the president read directly from the report: "Iraq's WMD program spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and was elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of [the US invasion]."

Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and his team pulled out of Iraq ahead of the US invasion in March. The UN Security Council refused to back the US-led war, insisting that Blix be given more time to do his work.

Kay said he will need up to nine more months to finish the search before he can make definitive conclusions about the extent of Iraq's weapons program. However, underscoring the obstacles investigators face, he revealed for the first time that at least one Iraqi who has cooperated with the United States and Britain was assassinated more than a month ago and that another, described as one of the most important sources of information on biological weapons activities, sustained six gunshot wounds. The attacks are believed to be retribution for their cooperation.

Kay's comments to reporters reassessing the effectiveness of the UN weapons inspections run counter to that of the Bush administration, which has repeatedly claimed that international efforts over the past decade to scuttle Iraqi weapons ambitions were a failure. As a result, Bush administration officials asserted, immediate military action was necessary to prevent Iraq from threatening the region with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

Administration officials had cited the nuclear threat as one of the most pressing. But Kay said yesterday that the assessment by nuclear inspectors led by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei before the war -- that Iraq was probably five to seven years away from developing an atomic bomb -- appeared in retrospect to be on the mark. Kay said his current assessment and the UN assessment, "do not differ in huge amounts."

Still, the Bush administration insisted yesterday that Kay's interim report proves that Iraq had repeatedly deceived the UN and was pursuing a series of illegal activities, even if no actual weapons have yet to be uncovered in more than three months of searching.

Bush, speaking at the White House, said it is now clear Iraq did not fully disclose its weapons activities, as required by UN Resolution 1441, approved last November. Resolution 1441 called on the regime to fully account for all of its weapons and development efforts or face undefined consequences.

Kay disclosed that among his findings were that Iraq and North Korea concluded a contract in 2002 for the No-Dong missile, capable of traveling 1,300 miles and prohibited under the UN embargo.

He said Iraq went as far as to pay Pyongyang $10 million, but was told by the North Koreans that there is "so much US attention on us that we cannot deliver it." Kay added that according to seized documents, Iraqi attempts to recover the money were unsuccessful.

Blix, in an interview with BBC, said he doubted that Iraq could have easily developed weapons of mass destruction.

"I think one should have some caution there, because the Security Council had never intended to abandon long-term monitoring, so the Iraqis would not have been left alone to proceed with whatever they had started," he said. "If they can develop weapons of mass destruction in five years or 10 years, well, that certainly is not imminent."

David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector and now director of the Institute for Science and International Security, said: "Iraq did not comply, and I support the Bush administration statements to that effect. But the administration has not been able to substantiate its claim that the threat was imminent. I think Hans Blix and ElBaradei deserve an apology."

For a second day, Democrats on Capitol Hill said the findings to date do not support assertions of an imminent threat. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said, "It is clear to me that there was no imminence of a threat of weapons."

Kay stressed that while he is reevaluating his own views of the effectiveness of UN inspections and sanctions, the jury is still out.

He said that it appeared that "Saddam himself concluded that getting sanctions off was not the most important thing."

He said there was recent evidence that Iraq's ability to import civilian equipment that could be used to make weapons of mass destruction or other illegal equipment was getting easier. Still, he said the outside world "did not know the psychological impact of the sanctions [on the Iraqi regime] over the years."