Probe finds no illicit Iraq arms

WASHINGTON -- Iraq did not maintain an active program to develop weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and had no chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons when the United States invaded last year, the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq concluded yesterday.

Charles A. Duelfer, a former United Nations inspector now working for the CIA, said in a 1,000-page final report that Iraq's program was effectively destroyed after the first Gulf War and its efforts to acquire materials to make weapons of mass destruction diminished in the years between 1998, when UN inspectors left the country, and the 2003 US invasion.

There was "no evidence to suggest a concerted effort" to restart a nuclear program, reported Duelfer, who replaced David Kay as head of the Iraq Survey Group last December.

Iraq is believed to have destroyed all of its chemical weapons after the 1991 Gulf War and did not resume the program, his report said, and while the Ba'ath Party government attempted to preserve its capability to make biological agents, there were "no indications" the regime was developing any.

The findings contradict the Bush administration's main rationale for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein -- that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and was in the process of developing more. Bush administration officials cited a maturing nuclear weapons program, mobile biological weapons laboratories, and tons of chemical weapons as posing an imminent threat.

The report went further than others in disputing the notion that Iraq was prepared to restart its banned weapons programs in the absence of inspections. While it stressed that the Iraqis kept little paperwork and most instructions were given orally by Hussein, Iraq had no formal plan to revive its WMD program.

Nevertheless, Duelfer endorsed the idea that Hussein wanted to develop weapons of mass destruction. The toppled leader and other former Iraqi officials told inspectors that Iraq hoped to revive a weapons program if UN sanctions were lifted, the report said, and was violating the sanctions in importing some types of banned materials that could be used to make weapons.

President Bush, appearing at a campaign stop yesterday, maintained that Hussein's history of developing weapons of mass destruction and using them against Iraqi Kurds and neighboring Iran in the 1980s -- combined with his ties to terrorist groups -- posed a sufficient threat to justify removing him from power.

The Iraq Survey Group reported new evidence that Hussein used chemical weapons during a Shi'a Muslim uprising in southern Iraq immediately after the 1991 war, and said it could not rule out the possibility that weapons were secreted outside the country before the 2003 invasion.

"We knew the dictator had a history of using weapons of mass destruction, a long record of aggression and hatred for America," Bush said yesterday in a speech in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. "There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks. In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

Though there was no evidence of weapons development, Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that Iraq violated some of the restrictions placed on it by the United Nations after Hussein's forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

Duelfer found that Iraq imported some materials that could be used for conventional weapons between 1998 and when UN inspectors returned briefly in late 2002. Iraqi scientists also worked on unmanned aerial vehicles and long-range missiles, and maintained industrial capability that could have been converted to use in weapons production.

The investigation, which cost $900 million, involved nearly 1,500 investigators, and lasted more than a year, identified what it called Hussein's "strategic intent" to re-create the country's weapons capability in the event that sanctions were lifted and Iraq's struggling economy stabilized. It concluded that fear of renewed warfare with its longstanding enemy Iran was a central motivator of this intent.

"In Saddam's view," the report said, "WMD helped save the regime multiple times." Thus, "Saddam's primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the regime."

By 2001, the Iraqis had found new ways around the UN restrictions and received funds through the UN Oil-for-Food program, which allowed Iraq to sell oil and use the profits to buy humanitarian goods but were instead diverted for military goods.

"He was making progress in eroding sanctions -- a lot of progress -- and had it not been for the events of 9/11, 2001, things would have taken a very different course for the regime," Duelfer told the armed services panel yesterday. "Most senior members of the regime and scientists assumed that the programs would begin in earnest when sanctions ended. And sanctions were eroding."

Some questions, however, remain unanswered, according to the US inspection team.

"For example, we cannot yet definitively say whether or not WMD materials were transferred out of Iraq before the war," Duelfer said. "Neither can we definitively answer some questions about possible retained stocks though, as I say, it is my judgment that retained stocks do not exist."

The report noted that the United States received varying degrees of cooperation from Iraqi officials during the course of their work.

"Some obstructed all attempts to elicit information on WMD and illicit activities of the former regime," the report said. "Others, however, were keen to help clarify every issue, sometimes to the point of self-incrimination." Thousands of pages of new Iraqi documents still need to be reviewed.

Still, Duelfer and his military deputy, Marine Corps Brigadier General Joseph J. McMenamen, found that the intelligence agencies that were convinced Iraq had at least some stockpiles hidden were wrong.

"These are important lessons we must apply to current and future US and international efforts to stop the scourge of proliferation of such weapons elsewhere in the world," the committee chairman, Senator John Warner, a Virginia Republican, told Duelfer. "Your conclusions differ from the prewar assessments of our intelligence community, differ from the assessments of the United Nations, and differ from the assessments of intelligence services of many other nations."

For critics of the Bush administration's decision to go to war, the report was viewed as conclusive evidence that Hussein did not pose an imminent threat.

Michael McCurry, a senior adviser to Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, told reporters that the Duelfer report "is a very significant commentary on the mistaken case for war presented by this administration."

A senior Democrat said the desire to make weapons was not the same as stockpiling weapons. "We did not go to war because Saddam had future intentions to obtain weapons of mass destruction," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the armed services panel.

To one specialist who long suspected Iraq had a hidden program, the report was another reminder of the difficulty in knowing what exactly Iraq was doing all these years.

"You would have had to be pretty clever to figure out what the Iraqis were up to," said Clifford Singer, director of the arms control, disarmament, and international security program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Iraq appears to have done such an amazing job of getting rid of its program."

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.