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Two Swedish arms experts made a secret visit to Iraq in June to investigate claims by an Iraqi scientist that Saddam Hussein's toppled regime was pursuing a biological and chemical weapons programme right up until last year, Sweden's TT news agency reported Saturday. The experts, from the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), travelled to Iraq posing as journalists without the knowledge of either the US-led occupying forces or the Swedish government. They spent nearly a week in the country to investigate documents produced by the scientist. The scientist claimed that Saddam's regime was still producing the deadly anthrax virus last year, despite the presence of UN weapons inspectors in the country. The head of the FOI, Aake Sellstroem, told the agency that his experts had discovered "extremely interesting pieces from the puzzle", even if they had uncovered no "smoking guns" that would show Saddam was still seeking weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war. London and Washington both justified their invasion of Iraq by saying that Saddam had built up an arsenal of banned weapons that were an international security threat. However, several months after the fall of Baghdad, coalition forces have been unable to uncover any concrete proof that the former Iraqi president was pursuing such a programme, raising major questions over the necessity of the war. The debate has been especially loud in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair has been mired in a political crisis after the apparent suicide of an arms expert at the centre of media claims that the government exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam. Sweden's FOI was alerted to the Iraqi scientist by a television team working for the World Television Network (WTN), which then accompanied the two experts in Iraq and will broadcast a documentary on their trip Saturday evening. According to TT, the scientist also produced maps indicating where Saddam's regime hid arms and materials linked to its alleged biological and chemical weapons programme. One of the two experts who visited Iraq was a former colleague of former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix -- the respected Swede who was in charge of a team of inspectors inside the country during the standoff that led to war. The FOI was not available for comment. All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. Quick Links
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