WAR ON IRAK

New Scotsman: Allies hushed up weapons' destruction

THE highest-ranking defector ever to turn informant on Saddam Hussein’s
government told United Nations weapons inspectors in 1995 that Iraq had
destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks after the Gulf
war. But UN inspectors hushed up that part of Hussein Kamel’s story -
which he also told to debriefers from British and United States
intelligence - because they wanted to keep the pressure on Iraq to tell
more... Kamel’s value as an informant, however, was huge; for ten
years
he had run Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and missile weapons
programmes, as well as Iraqi efforts to keep the weapons secret... But
Kamel’s story that Iraq had indeed - as it has long claimed - destroyed
chemical and biological stocks back in 1991 was never reported.