Baghdad, Aug 12: Iraqi efforts to convince the world it is a victim of false US claims and allegations have risen in recent days along with the speculation Washington soon will wage war to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Iraqi officials yesterday took journalists on a tour of a site in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, said to be a suspected biological weapons production site. Iraqi officials maintain it was a livestock vaccination laboratory. And Saddam recently summoned a visiting British member of Parliament, George Galloway, for a meeting in an underground bunker. Galloway, a frequent visitor to baghdad and critic of US and British policies toward Iraq, wrote about the meeting in an article published in the British tabloid the mail yesterday. Iraq blamed civil engineer Adnan Saeed al-Haidari, who once worked with a military industrial company in Baghdad but fled the country, and unspecified others of making false claims about the alleged weapons site to the CIA. “Some Iraqis who escaped Iraq from abroad are saying that this site is producing biological agents,'' said Husam Mohammed Ameen, director-general of the group responsible for coordinating with UN inspectors when they were in Iraq.
A sign at the entrance to the laboratory, which Iraqi officials say was closed by UN inspectors in 1996, reads “general establishment for animal development.'' Inside, dusty bottles and tubes were scattered on the floor and equipment appeared broken and dusty.
Monitoring cameras said to have been installed by the UN inspectors were still mounted on the walls, though not functioning since inspectors departed in 1998.
Bureau Report