Iraqi spokesman denies banned weapons 'tested on Iranian PoWs'

An official Iraqi spokesman has denied reports in the British 'Sunday Times' newspaper on Sunday that Iraq has tested chemical and biological weapons on Iranian PoW's, Iraqi TV reported on Monday.

In a statement to the Iraqi News Agency, reported by the TV, the spokesman said that the allegations "stem from a sick imagination and that they are part of the misinformation and distortion campaign being launched by the US and Zionist intelligence organs against Iraq through various diplomatic, media and political channels".

The spokesman quoted the newspaper as saying that the reports were based on Israeli intelligence sources, UNSCOM inspectors and Iraqi opposition circles.

"It is clear that all these sources are unreliable in terms of information and are biased against Iraq," the spokesman said.

"We are content with the statement made by a UN spokesman on 15th January 1998, when he refuted these allegations and said that the UNSCOM inspectors have no evidence that such experiments took place", he added.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.