Saddam Hussein could have nuclear weapons within months if Iraq succeeds in acquiring sufficient highly enriched uranium from foreign sources, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date of Saddam's arsenal.
However, yesterday's long-awaited report by a top British think-tank balances its warnings about Iraq's "nuclear wildcard" by stating that its drive to develop weapons of mass destruction has been "severely diminished" by war, international inspections and sanctions.
Its nuclear and missile programmes were no more advanced than at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies said.
The IISS dossier pre-empted publication of the Government's own file on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and was eagerly awaited as a source of independent evidence.
But on the wisdom of taking military action against Iraq the report is neutral. It states: "Either course of action carries risks. Wait and the threat will grow. Strike and the threat may be used."
Both supporters and opponents of using force to remove Saddam claimed the report bolstered their cases.
Tony Blair's official spokesman said that it painted "a powerful picture of an unstable regime with access to biological and chemical weapons". He added: "People should really read and digest what it is saying."
Mr Blair will attempt to mollify his critics at the TUC conference in Blackpool today by insisting that military action against Iraq would be in defence, not defiance, of the UN against the "International outlaw" Saddam Hussein. He will argue that Saddam's flouting of UN resolutions on weapons inspections has weakened the organisation's authority.
The TUC conference yesterday approved a motion saying that any military action against Iraq must have the UN's "explicit authority", with a stream of speakers condemning the use of force as imperialist, adventurist and a threat to world peace. However, the delegates narrowly defeated a more hardline motion demanding that the Government should withhold support for any attack.
President Chirac of France yesterday floated a two-step plan that, at the very least, would see UN backing for a tough new inspection regime. He used an interview in The New York Times to propose a Security Council resolution giving Baghdad a three-week deadline to readmit UN weapons inspectors "without restrictions of preconditions".
The think-tank's dossier, called Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction -a Net Assessment, admitted that little was known about Saddam's clandestine programme to develop such weapons since the UN inspectors were forced to leave Baghdad in 1998. "The extent to which Iraq has taken advantage of the absence of inspectors to begin reconstituting its programmes and the extent to which these efforts have succeeded or failed, is not known," it said.
However, it made a number of other key assumptions:
Saddam, based on his record and the extraordinary array of unconventional weapons he had been hiding from the world prior to the Gulf War of 1991, is still heavily engaged in developing nuclear, biological and chemical warheads.
The Iraqi leader still has huge stocks of biological agents including anthrax, botulism and possibly smallpox.
His chemical stocks are depleted but probably being urgently and secretly increased under the cover of commercial chemical plants for use against an invasion force.
He has a small number of extended-range missiles which could reach Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey.
The dossier concluded: "The Iraqi regime shows a profound and enduring belief in the strategic value of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and missiles as essential to national security and regime survival."
Despite the risk of Saddam's agents acquiring highly-enriched uranium on the black market or by stealing the material from a poorly guarded nuclear fuel facility overseas, the institute's dossier said nuclear weapons "seem the furthest from Iraq's grasp".
"We have greater confidence that Iraq's pre-Gulf War nuclear infrastructure and material assets were effectively accounted for and disarmed by 1998, compared to its pre-war chemical and biological capability," the dossier said. However, Iraq had salvaged its most vital assets -knowledge and personnel. Nuclear weapons-grade uranium or plutonium "is the vital missing ingredient for an Iraqi bomb". On the biological weapons (BW), the IISS dossier said it was much more difficult to assess Iraq's capability. "Amounts and types of BW agents that Iraq may have at its disposal can only be guessed at but presumably includes botulinum toxin, anthrax and perhaps other agents in the range of thousands of litres."
Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary, insisted: "If the British Government is to persuade public opinion and the House of Commons, that Iraq not only possesses, but has the imminent intention of using, weapons of mass destruction, it will have to provide something rather better than the terms of this report."
AMMUNITION FOR THE DOVES
* Iraq is years away from producing fissile nuclear material
* Iraq could not deliver chemical or biological weapons effectively enough to cause
massive loss of life
* Iraq's actual stocks of weapons are unknown
* Iraq has no facilities to produce long range missiles
AMMUNITION FOR THE HAWKS
* Iraq could make a nuclear weapon "within months" with fissile nuclear material
* Iraq could make biological weapons "within weeks"
* Iraq has probably retained supplies of mustard gas, sarin and VX nerve gas
* Iraq can deliver weapons via artillery shells, rockets and aerial bombs
