Reuters
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Iraq could build a nuclear bomb within months if it got fissile material from abroad, but its weapons of mass destruction capacity has declined since the 1991 Gulf War, a leading independent think-tank says.
In a study released ahead of U.S. President George W. Bush's policy speech on Iraq on Thursday, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said Baghdad did not have nuclear arms and probably lacked means to deliver its residual chemical and biological weapons effectively to cause massive loss of life.
Despite official denials, Iraq probably retains substantial stocks of toxins and biological growth media, as well as a few hundred tonnes of blistering mustard and nerve agents, and could resume producing both within weeks or months, the IISS said on Monday.
The report, based on publicly available information, was released amid fierce international debate about a possible U.S.-led war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
It offered no clear support either to U.S. hawks who argue that a preventive strike is an urgent necessity, or to those, mainly in Europe, who advocate continued containment of Iraq and the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.
"Either course of action carries risks. Wait and the threat will grow. Strike and the threat may be used," said the London-based institute, which produces the respected annual handbook, "The Military Balance".
NO FISSILE MATERIAL
The United Nations ordered the total elimination of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missile programmes after the Gulf War but Saddam defied the resolutions.
If weapons inspections were resumed, Iraq's freedom of action to pursue weapons of mass destruction would be restricted but not eliminated, given Iraq's record of deception and obstruction in the 1990s, the IISS said.
However, faced with an invasion, Saddam would have nothing to lose and might use chemical and biological weapons in missile attacks to draw Israel into the war or even through special forces or terrorist groups in the United States and its allies.
The IISS said there was no sign that Baghdad had the ability to produce fissile material or had acquired any from abroad.
But IISS director John Chipman said that if Iraq did get enriched uranium with foreign aid, it could be able to put a nuclear warhead on a missile capable of hitting Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Israel, Turkey, Jordan or Iran within about a year.
"Were he able to obtain fissile material from abroad, steal it or buy it in some way, we certainly believe he has the ability to put together a nuclear weapon very quickly in a matter of months," Chipman said.
Bush highlighted Saddam's potential to develop nuclear weapons before talks at the weekend on tackling Iraq with Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The IISS said Saddam had subordinated all other foreign policy goals and his country's economic development to his relentless drive for weapons of mass destruction, enduring more than a decade of sanctions rather than obey U.N. resolutions.
"Given Baghdad's behaviour over the last 25 years, there is every reason to believe that it remains committed to retaining and developing its WMD and missile capabilities as a core objective," the report said.
"Nonetheless, Iraq's overall current ability to produce and deliver WMD are severely diminished from its zenith on the eve of the Gulf War."
LIMITED ABILITY TO KILL
The findings broadly mirror assessments by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, except that while the latter estimates Iraq still has up to 80 missiles capable of hitting Israel, the IISS estimates it has at most a dozen.
U.N. inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 before a four-day U.S.-British bombing campaign intended to punish Saddam for obstructing the inspectors' work.
Since then, little is known about how Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction programmes have developed.
"What is new now is that time is running out. The longer there are no inspectors in Iraq, the less we can know, the more likely it becomes that Iraq is reconstituting a capacity to have weapons of mass destruction at least on the same scale as it had in 1990," IISS senior fellow Klaus Becher said.
Chipman told BBC radio that Iraq's ability to use chemical and biological weapons in battle or missile attacks was limited.
"(Iraq's) ballistic missiles have what are called impact fuses, which means that much of the agent would be destroyed on impact," he said. "So they would be important as a terror weapon but they would not be militarily all that significant in battle."
