Iraq Arrests Anthrax Expert

Iraq has told the United Nations that a senior official in Baghdad's biological weapons program was arrested trying to flee the country, a U.N. official said today.

The New York Times, quoting Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon, said Nassir al-Hindawi is in an Iraqi prison after he was found with documents relating to the country's biological weapons program and evidence that he was about to leave Iraq illegally.

The newspaper quoted unidentified Western diplomats as saying Hindawi had a forged passport.

Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for the U.N. Special Commission, said Iraq notified the United Nations a few weeks ago of its claim that Hindawi was arrested and turned over documents, "which were nothing we had not already seen."

Buchanan said U.N. inspectors spoke to Hindawi last year but had not asked to interview him before being notified of his arrest. Buchanan said Hindawi was involved in Iraq's anthrax program but apparently not in the production of germ-filled warheads.

In Washington, Defense Secretary William Cohen said he could not tell whether the reported arrest of "this particular individual would be an intelligence loss to the United States," and he declined to comment on whether U.S. intelligence organizations had assisted the official in his attempt to leave Iraq.

But Cohen said the Iraqi action may make it even more difficult for Iraq to convince the U.N. of its full compliance with weapons inspections and to win a lifting of sanctions imposed after the Persian Gulf War.

"This may be evidence of an attempt on the part of Saddam Hussein to continue to hide and to prevent the UNSCOM inspectors from receiving information that would help them in their duties," Cohen said, "and if so, that would only complicate the ultimate resolution."

The Times said Western officials want to interview Hindawi outside the presence of Iraqi secret police—who have been at the interviews so far—in order to determine the scope of Iraq's germ weapons program.

"He would have been a gold mine of information," said Jonathan B. Tucker, a former U.N. inspector and arms control official, now a germ weapons expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.

Last month, a threatened U.S. military strike against Iraq was averted when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein agreed to allow U.N. inspectors to check presidential palaces and other sites.

This week, Richard Butler, chairman of the United Nations Special Commission, arrived in Iraq to plan for those inspections. The commission is charged with disarming Iraq of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, as well other weapons of mass destruction.

©1998 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed