IRAQ: WMD

Independent: Saddam was bluffing over WMD stocks, says report
New blow for Bush over failure to find weapons as turmoil continues in Baghdad

The Bush administration is bracing itself for the publication of a report today that will confirm the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - the main justification given for the war.

David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey group which is leading the hunt for the weapons, is expected to tell the House and Senate Intelligence committees that Saddam Hussein may have been bluffing over whether he possessed chemical and biological arms.

Mr Kay is likely to highlight the instructions issued by Baghdad to Iraqi commanders in the field shortly before war, to use chemical weapons against the invaders. Mr Kay will probably say that these instructions, intercepted by US intelligence services, were fakes, intended by Saddam to make himself appear a greater threat that he was.

Officially, his report will be "inconclusive" and stress Saddam's skill at hiding his prohibited weapons. But it may also raise the possibility that he had them scrapped shortly after, or even before, the 1991 Gulf War, which drove his forces from Kuwait.

At most, the report will say that the Iraqi dictator had the capabilities, in terms of precursor chemicals and "dual use" facilities, to restart production quickly once UN sanctions had been lifted.