(Ha'aretz) Ze'ev Schiff - British Prime Minister Tony Blair's report on Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction contains some substantial new information that surprised Israel. While Israel had shared the assessments by Western intelligence agencies that Iraq would obtain nuclear weapons within 5-7 years, Blair's report says the Iraqis will succeed in 2-3 years. Israel was already aware that agents of both Iraq and Iran have been independently combing African states looking to buy uranium. British intelligence believes Saddam has only 20 long-range ground-to-ground missiles, but Israel has long believed he has 50 to 70 such missiles.
2002-10-02 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive