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WMD source âwas senior Iraqi officerâ
EFLA senior Iraqi officer on active service within the country's military provided British intelligence last August with the information that Iraq could fire chemical or biological warheads within 45 minutes of Saddam Hussein giving the order, according to senior Whitehall officials. The claim, contained in the government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, has become the chief test of whether ministers "duped" the British public over the need for war. Whitehall officials in two departments said last night the evidence of the 45-minute capability had come from a serving Iraqi officer with a record for providing reliable data over years. Intelligence sought to find a second source for the information and was unable to do so. However, the JIC was prepared to rely on a single source because the official was a senior figure in Mr Hussein's regime, not a defector. The information was analysed by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee and immediately distributed to some cabinet ministers at the end of August, a few weeks before the compilation of the government's WMD dossier. Mr Blair remained confident that chemical and biological weapons would be found in Iraq, saying that the Iraq Survey Group - made up of 1,400 UK, US and Australian officials - were only now starting their work. Posted by: JP 2003-06-05 |
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