The New York Times > International > Middle East > Arms Move to Syria 'Unlikely,' Report Says
http://www.nytimes.com/ads/starwood/popWestinApr.html?s...=2005.04.26.12.55.07Arms Move to Syria 'Unlikely,' Report Says
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 26, 2005
he Bush administration's senior weapons inspector said in a report released last night that it was "unlikely" that Saddam Hussein's forces moved weapons to Syria, though he expressed concern about nuclear-related equipment that was apparently removed after American-led forces invaded Iraq.
In a 92-page addendum to a report issued last fall, Charles Duelfer, the head of the former Iraq Survey Group, was also highly critical of the way key Iraqi scientists were interviewed after their capture, suggesting opportunities to mine information from them might have been lost.
Mr. Duelfer, who took over the largely fruitless hunt for weapons after the resignation of David Kay, said, "Many detainees had as many as four different debriefers and were debriefed dozens of time, often by new, inexperienced and uninformed debriefers."
Nonetheless, he said, Mr. Hussein's large corps of scientists and engineers provided much of the critical information that led to the conclusion that Iraq posed little or no threat of using weapons of mass destruction against its own people, its neighbors or American forces.
On Syria, the report said that "no information gleaned from questioning Iraqis supported the possibility" that weapons were moved out of the country before the invasion, which was one theory about why no unconventional weapons were found.
Mr. Duelfer reported that his group, the Iraq Survey Group, believed "it was unlikely that an official transfer of W.M.D. material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, I.S.G. was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited W.M.D.-related materials."
In the addendum, posted last night on the C.I.A.'s Web site (www.cia.gov) and reported by The Washington Post, he also comes to largely the same conclusion that international weapons inspectors and some European nations argued before the war: that Mr. Hussein's weapons ambitions were defeated by inspections.
"U.N. sanctions and intrusive Unscom inspections dampened the regime's ability to retain its W.M.D. expertise," he wrote. "During the course of the 1990's, staffs were directed to civilian enterprises. Concomitantly, attention through emigration, retirement and natural processes occurred."
He concluded that there was little practical value in still detaining many scientists and engineers who worked in the projects, though he warned that if left jobless and penniless they could help another country or terror group develop weapons.
Mr. Duelfer also gave the administration's first significant account of what happened at Al Qaqaa, outside of Baghdad, where stockpiles of conventional explosives that had been sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency were looted. The revelation of that looting by The New York Times in the days leading up to the presidential election last year led to complaints by the Bush campaign that the release of the news had been timed to influence the election.
Mr. Duelfer reported that his inspectors did not get to the site until October 2004, about when the newspaper reports appeared, and apparently after the new Iraqi government reported the looting. The addendum shows pictures of the empty bunkers, though videos taken by television crews with American troops show the bunkers were still full of explosives well after the invasion.
Mr. Duelfer's report did not say why the explosives were left unguarded, even though they were considered especially dangerous.
In its most worrisome conclusion, the group "found that some nuclear-related dual-use equipment was missing from heavily damaged and looted sites" like Al Qaqaa, but its ultimate disposition could not be determined. While some of it was sold for scrap, "still others could have been taken intact to preserve their function," reinforcing conclusions of the Iraqi government and the I.A.E.A.
