Iraqi scientist 'has nothing to hide'

Iraqi scientist 'has nothing to hide'

Taken from home, the man the US says knows the secrets

Saddam Hussein's key scientific adviser who gave himself up to US forces continues to insist that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

General Amir al-Saadi surrendered when he learned through the media that he was on the most-wanted list.

Our Pentagon correspondent Nick Childs says officials are not hiding their eagerness to talk to General al-Saadi.

As well as being the public face and voice of Baghdad's case on its weapons programmes in the run-up to this conflict, he has been intimately involved with them over a long period.

Key capture

Our correspondent said: "The main concern from the American point of view will be how co-operative General al-Saadi will be.

"Early indications are, at least from the remarks he made to German television in which he maintained that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, suggest that he won't be.

"For that reason and because of his potential significance, US officials will probably want to keep him very much under wraps for now. At the same time they'll be hoping that his surrender may encourage others."

I have only ever told the truth, and time will bear me out

General Amir al-Saadi

Iraq's most wanted

The urbane Mr al-Saadi is primarily a chemist, who also happens to hold the rank of lieutenant-general.

He used to head Iraq's chemical weapons programme before, as the former regime in Baghdad asserted, it was abandoned.

But General al-Saadi was singled out by the US Secretary of State Colin Powell as a man whose job it was to mislead the UN weapons inspectors.

"Saadi's job is not to co-operate, it is to deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support them, but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing," Mr Powell told the Security Council.

US believes Iraq regime had facilities for chemical weapon production

He said Mr al-Saadi was orchestrating "the old game of cat and mouse" with the inspectors.

As the momentum to war quickened up, the main task for Mr al-Saadi, with his fluent English, became presenting Iraq's case to the world.

"The fiction goes on. It goes on and on," he said about the claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction

He maintained it was "heartening" for the Iraqi people to see most of the world's reaction against the evidence, and accused the US and the UK of agitating for war.

There was nothing hidden in Iraq's presidential compounds or palaces, he said.

The mobile weapons facilities referred to by Mr Powell simply did not exist.

"How can I prove we don't have it? We don't have it," he declared.

Key obstacle

Early in March, General al-Saadi said that Baghdad had now dealt with "practically all" of the UN inspectors' demands.

He said excavations at the al-Aziziya air base, 104 kilometres (65 miles) south-west of Baghdad, had uncovered the remains of bombs containing anthrax, aflotoxin and botulin, which Iraq said it had unilaterally destroyed in 1991.

The general said eight of the bombs had been uncovered intact.

Iraq's failure to account for 157 R-400 bombs, designed to deliver biological and chemical weapons, has been a key sticking point with the United Nations.

General al-Saadi also said Iraq was continuing with the destruction of al-Samoud II missiles and casting chambers, in what he called an example of Iraq's "pro-active co-operation" with UN inspectors.

Iraq had about 120 al-Samoud II missiles, which the UN said breached range limits imposed after the 1991 Gulf War.

He said pictures of the destruction had not been released because it would be "too harsh" and "unacceptable" for the Iraqi people to see.

General al-Saadi said 1.5 missing tonnes of VX gas and stockpiles of anthrax that were not put into bombs were also unilaterally destroyed.

He said Iraq knew where the destruction sites were and could carry out tests to prove the quantity of materials disposed of there.

The general said that to all fair minded people, Iraq had done more than enough.