i know. i know. they dont have wmd

Iraqi Defends Germ Program to Journalist

By BETH GARDINER
Associated Press
February 9, 2003, 1:04 PM EST

LONDON -- A scientist believed to have played a leading role in Iraq's biological weapons program says in an interview published Sunday that her country was justified in producing germ weapons to defend itself.

Rihab Taha also says she helped compile the biological section of Iraq's recent weapons declaration and describes it as honest and transparent.

Taha was interviewed in Baghdad on Jan. 21 by British journalist Jane Corbin. Five officials and guards sat in on the meeting, which occurred at the office of the Iraqi agency that deals with U.N. weapons inspectors. Taha, who was educated in Britain, spoke in English.

Corbin interviewed Taha for a report scheduled to air on British Broadcasting Corp. television Sunday night. She also described the talk in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The BBC said it was unable to release an advance transcript or recording of the interview.

The inspectors are believed to be eager to speak to Taha, but she said she would not meet with them alone.

"I do not trust them from the last inspections," she is quoted as saying. "I think it is better for me and for them and for everybody to have witnesses because I think it is our right."

Taha is believed to have been a driving force behind Iraq's production of germ weapons in the 1980s and 1990s.

"We did produce biological agents" including anthrax and botulinum toxins, she was quoted as saying, insisting the weapons were intended for self-defense.

She said she no longer does such work but argued Iraq has a right to such weapons.

"Iraq has been threatened by different enemies and we are in an area that suffers from regional conflict," she reportedly said. "I think it is our right to have a capability to defend ourselves and to have something as a deterrent."

Iraq's most comprehensive attempt to rebut claims it has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons was a declaration to the United Nations in December. The United States and Britain dismissed the 12,000-page declaration as lies and a rehash of old information.

But Taha said the biological section, which she said she helped compile, was "very transparent, believe me, giving even tiny details."

Specifically she took issue with the inspectors' assertion that there is a discrepancy between the amount of anthrax Iraq produced and what it has accounted for.

"The inspectors' assessment of the amount of anthrax is based on a numerical calculation only -- that the production facilities we had between 1988 and 1990 worked nonstop, day and night to produce such quantities," she was quoted as saying. "It's not a realistic calculation."

Inspectors who discount the regime's declaration "have bad intentions towards Iraq because they are under the rule and the influence of different countries and governments," she reportedly said.

Inspectors have been trying for weeks to speak privately with Iraqi scientists linked to the country's alleged weapons programs. The arms monitors believe the experts would be more forthright without an Iraqi official present.

Most scientists have refused to attend such meetings, but the fifth one in three days submitted to an interview with inspectors SatVrday.