WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (AFP) - A US report which says the United States got it wrong about Iraq's weapons is a victory for the United Nations even if accusations of corruption in the oil-for-food programme cast a shadow over the success, experts said Thursday.
The report presented by Iraq Survey Group chief Charles Duelfer on Wednesday confirmed the widely reported suspicions of UN weapons inspectors that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when US forces invaded in March 2003.
It added that Saddam's regime started getting rid of chemical and biological weapons and halting its nuclear programme after the 1991 Gulf War when UN sanctions and a stronger weapons regime were imposed.
UN "sanctions and inspections lasted longer than Saddam anticipated," said the report. "The inspections were also more intrusive than expected."
During the battle at the United Nations over US demands for backing for an invasion, UN weapons inspectors had sought more time to carry out their work. The report's conclusions posthumously backs their case.
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said only a few months more time would have been needed to assess the scope of Iraq's weapons threat.
But President George W. Bush's administration scoffed at the request, saying that the inspections had not been effective and that Saddam had not intention of following UN resolutions.
After the release of the Duelfer report, Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, highlighted the effectiveness of the UN regime.
"We know that UN inspections and sanctions had stopped Iraq from developing and deploying WMD. UN sanctions had decimated Iraq's economy, infrastructure and ultimately, it's ability to wage war and threaten neigbours," said Rockefeller.
Scot Ritter, an American former member of the US weapons team and a longstanding Bush critic, said the report had confirmed "that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction capability, that the United Nations had, indeed, succeeded in disarming Iraq in 1991."
The Duelfer report also pointed an accusing finger at corruption within the UN oil-for-food programme.
It said Saddam authorised payments in a bid to divert and undermine the UN sanctions. The report named officials and companies from France, Russia and China, all countries that opposed the US-led invasion and all with permanent seats on the UN Security Council.
The Iraqi government issued millions of dollars in lucrative oil export vouchers as part of a concerted effort to win assistance in lifting UN sanctions, said the report.
The "investigation also makes quite clear how Baghdad exploited the mechanism for executing the oil-for-food programme to give individuals and countries an economic stake in ending sanctions," said the report.
Duelfer concluded that if Saddam could have ended sanctions, he would have tried to rebuild Iraq's weapons programme.
Congressman Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, has called for access to a UN audit of the oil-for-food programme.
He insisted access was "imperative if the world body is to escape further damage to its credibility as a result of this grossly mismanaged programme."