The Washington Post, UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations' chief weapons inspector has concluded there is no evidence that Iraq ever developed unpiloted drones capable of discharging chemical and biological weapons agents on enemy targets.
The Bush administration cited the threat that Iraqi drones could be used in such attacks on U.S. cities in making its case for invading Iraq, but U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq challenged those claims after the U.S.-led invasion. The CIA's top weapons expert in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, revived the debate, telling Congress last April that the group overseeing the U.S.-led hunt for Iraqi weapons had found evidence of advances in the development of Iraqi drones that were not reported to the United Nations.
Although the United Nations has suspected that Iraq had halted development of drones for chemical or biological attacks, the findings are the most definitive U.N. account of the program since the U.N. inspection agency was established in 1999. They are consistent with the views of U.S. Air Force intelligence analysts and the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, which said before the war that the drones were being developed for reconnaissance.
The Security Council is expected to debate the weapons inspector's conclusions Wednesday.
In the 15-page report, Dimitri Perricos, acting chief of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said Iraq admitted pursuing a 1990 effort to convert a Russian fighter jet into a remotely piloted vehicle capable of spraying biological warfare agents at a target. But the program was halted by the beginning of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he said.
