IRAQ: Iraq's weapons arsenal, while not fully rebuilt following defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, remains significant in certain areas and is potentially menacing, according to British military experts.
Identifying Iraq's war machine is no easy task, with Western experts having to rely on information from Iraqi renegades, among them numerous officers, images from US spy satellites and calculations made by UN inspectors, who withdrew from the country in 1998 ahead of US-led bombing raids on Baghdad.
The strands of information fail to provide the West with a precise picture of Iraq's forces. At the time of the Gulf War, the West overestimated the quantity and quality of the opposition's arsenal.
According to the British government, Iraq is developing a nuclear programme and already possesses chemical and biological weapons.
"As far as nuclear weapons are concerned, we believe he [President Saddam Hussein\] is in the process of developing that capacity," Foreign Office Minister Mr Mike O'Brien said.
"Obviously, it's not just having the nuclear weapons but the ballistic missile technology in that capacity in order to deliver them. . . We believe that as far as chemical and biological weapons are concerned he does indeed have a certain capability there."
But Mr Paul Beaver, one of Britain's leading military experts, said that, "on paper at the moment, there is really no threat" from Iraq.
"The \ means of delivery for the arsenal or weapons . . . are very scarce but there is a very strong indication that he [Mr Saddam\] is very close to getting more missiles, if he hasn't already got them," Mr Beaver said yesterday.
He said Mr Saddam would probably attempt to get more cruise missiles from North Korea, accused by Bush as forming "an axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran.
Mr Beaver also did not rule out the possibility of Iraq producing its own missiles.
"They have the necessary technology and have already done it, in 1999, when they converted a number of Czech training aircraft," he said.
"They were found to have been rigged up for warheads," he said, adding that they transformed aircraft into pilotless cruise missiles with a radius capability to "certainly threaten neighbouring countries".
Iraq's army possesses, in theory, 2,500 tanks - "not a hugely dangerous tank organisation" according to Mr Beaver. They are for the most part modified Russian T-55s and T-72s, kept in the Republican Guard around Baghdad.
"The key to defeating them is to bring them out in the open to be destroyed," Mr Beaver said.
"Iraq is not a hard nut to crack but its not easy either. . . we know that he [Mr Saddam\] has moved a lot of its air defence systems into areas like mosques, courtyards, schools and hospitals."
Mr Beaver said Iraq's fleet of helicopters certainly posed a risk.
Mr John Keegan, defence specialist for the Daily Telegraph, said he believed that Iraq's arsenal posed little threat to the West.
"Saddam's equipment is old Soviet material, most of it now 15 or 20 years out of date," he wrote in yesterday's newspaper.
"There is a severe shortage of spare parts, with only half in working condition. That still leaves him with perhaps 1,000 operational tanks and several thousand armoured personnel carriers."
While the Iraqi war machine does not pose a threat today, according to Mr Beaver, it will do "in about six months".
"That's the critical thing," he pointed out. "I don't think the West can allow him to continue."
British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair is due to meet US President Bush this weekend to discuss Iraq.- (AFP)