BBC: Iraqi scientist confirms the destruction of banned weapons in 1991

The Iraqi nuclear scientist Jaafar Dia Jaafar said that the toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered disposing of all mass destruction weapons the country owned following the Gulf war in 1991 and did not try to build others after that.

In an interview with the BBC, Jaafar said that Saddam Hussein took the decision in July 1991 to give up the program and destroy what is left of its equipment.

He stressed that Iraq's chemical and biological weapons were destroyed after the first Gulf war and never remanufactured afterwards.

The Iraqi scientist also explained that damages were also inflicted on the installations of the Iraqi nuclear program during the war of 1991, noting that Iraq had not then and was not able to get resources to continue the program under the sanctions law.

He said that workers in the nuclear program received instructions to hand over the installations to the Republican Guard who by its turn received an order to destroy them.

The Iraqi nuclear scientist denied allegations of the British government to justify its war against Iraq which said that Baghdad tried to buy Uranium from Niger -- charges that American investigations were said to have been false.

Jaafar had run the Iraqi nuclear program for 25 years. He refused to cooperate with the UN inspectors before the eruption of the war which increased the suspicion over the mass destruction weapons.

Jaafar was born in Iraq and got his education in Britain. Saddam Hussein ordered his imprisonment in 1980. But after the Israeli raids on Tammuz reactor in 1981 he was summoned by the Iraqi President once again in order to resume the nuclear weapons in the country. Jaafar only left Iraq two days before the fall of Baghdad heading for Syria.