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Iraq had chemical weapons: Yaalon

JERUSALEM: Iraq had chemical weapons and the means to deliver them ahead of last year’s US-led invasion, Israel’s military chief said in an interview published on Monday.

Iraq may have transferred the weapons to Syria or buried them in desert sands, said Lt Gen Moshe Yaalon, speaking a month after a parliamentary investigation criticised Israeli intelligence gathering on Iraq.

The parliamentary report found that Israeli warnings that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction were based on speculation and that Israeli authorities had little evidence to support this belief.

The report did not specifically address the issue of whether or not Saddam possessed chemical weapons. In Monday’s interview in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Yaalon said that before the war, Iraq had developed the ability to fit planes with chemical weapons that could have been used against Israel.

“There is no doubt that in the eight months leading up to the war, the Iraqis prepared an ability to deliver by air chemical weapons, at least at us,” Yaalon said. —AP

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