Articulate chemist now adviser to Saddam denies U.S. claims

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The Iraqi general whose job Secretary of State Colin Powell says is to deceive U.N. weapons inspectors is a chemist believed to be a driving force behind Iraq's banned weapons programs of the 1980s.

Once dismissed from the army for having a foreign wife and not belonging to Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party, Lt. Gen. Amer al-Saadi now has one of Iraq's most high-profile jobs -- point man on the U.N. weapons inspections.

Al-Saadi's role is under scrutiny because of U.S. and British charges that Iraq is concealing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in violation of U.N. resolutions following its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.

Presenting a case against Iraq before the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday, Powell spoke of a committee set up by Saddam to "spy" on U.N. inspectors in Iraq and hinder their work. Al-Saadi, Powell said, was a key member of that committee.

"It was Gen. Saadi who last fall publicly pledged that Iraq was prepared to cooperate unconditionally with inspectors. Quite the contrary, Saadi's job is not to cooperate, it is to deceive; not to disarm, but to undermine the inspectors; not to support them, but to frustrate them and to make sure they learn nothing."

"Absolute nonsense," al-Saadi countered.

Hoping to avert war, the chief U.N. inspectors, Mohamed ElBaradei and Hans Blix, will press al-Saadi and other Iraqi officials for a drastic change in attitude toward complying with disarmament in talks this weekend. But to persuade Saddam, the inspectors will have to first convince al-Saadi.

The polished Al-Saadi, who is believed to be 62 or 63, first caught Saddam's attention with his scientific and organizational contributions as Iraq expanded its weapons programs to include long-range missiles and chemical weapons.

Has Saddam's confidence

Saddam's confidence in him has endured for years, starting with the tumultuous inspections that began after the war and continuing after those checks resumed again in November after four years.

"I am knowledgeable about past arms programs and that's the only reason I am thrust into this," al-Saadi told ABC.

The son of a grain merchant from the southern town of Al-Omara, al-Saadi is a member of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority who studied chemistry and was educated in Britain and Germany.

He says he didn't plan a career in politics -- and still claims he has nothing to do with it -- according to friends and relatives living outside Iraq. He was dismissed from the army when the Baath Party came to power in 1968 because he was married to a German woman and was not a party member.

His expertise primarily in chemical weapons, however, later forced the army to take him back. He became a Cabinet minister in the 1990s and was a member of a select group thought to be instrumental in the development of Iraq's banned weapons programs in the 1980s.

At the height of the Iraq-Iran war in the mid-1980s, al-Saadi pooled together Iraqi missiles experts in an undertaking that in 1987 gave Iraq a modified Scud-B, ground-to-ground missile with a range of 400 miles, enough to hit Iran's capital Tehran.

Al-Saadi has been Iraq's top armament official since Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, defected to Jordan in 1995, then was killed shortly after being lured back to Iraq. Al-Saadi had worked as Kamel's deputy in the secretive military industries sector.

Widely thought to be the main brain behind the chemical weapons program -- which he says no longer exists -- al-Saadi has never publicly wavered in his statements that Iraq has eliminated its banned weapons programs.

"We are on solid ground because we have nothing to hide and we haven't hidden anything," he said.

Al-Saadi's loyalty to Saddam remains unquestioned, even though he hardly ever mentions the Iraqi leader in public, shows visible signs of discomfort when asked a political question, and according to one account, is a member of the Baath Party in name only.

In the ABC interview, al-Saadi recounted how he had been approached by U.S. and British agents urging him to defect while on business trips abroad.

"Would you do it?" he was asked.

"No," al-Saadi rejoined forcefully. "I am here with my people and I have a family, and when I say I have a family, I mean an extended family, al-Saadi, which is a whole tribe."

At times, however, he speaks philosophically and with fatalism about the enormous task placed on his shoulders.

"I am the optimist, I will work until the end," he said. "The end is if they (the United States) chose to go the unilateral way and attack Iraq ... it'll be a sad day for all of you, not just Iraq."

------

Associated Press reporter Salah Nasrawi contributed to this report.