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NEW YORK, April 21 — An Iraqi scientist who claims to have worked in Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons program told a U.S. military team that Iraq destroyed and buried chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began March 20, a newspaper reported Monday.
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MEMBERS OF MET Alpha — the Mobile Exploitation Team set up to hunt for illegal weapons of mass destruction — said the scientist led Americans to material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, according to The New York Times.
The Iraqi scientist, who was not named for fear he might be harmed, also said Iraq has secretly sent stockpiles of deadly agents and weapons technology to Syria in the mid-1990s, and more recently was cooperating with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network.
The U.S. Central Command could not confirm The New York Times report, and the White House had no immediate comment on it.
The report was withheld by military censors for three days, and some details about the chemicals were not allowed to be published. The reporter was not allowed to interview the Iraqi scientist.
