UN INSPECTORS BULLIED BY SADDAM HENCHMEN

SENIOR United Nations inspectors have revealed how Saddam Hussein put up a wall of obstacles as they tried to examine Iraq's deadly weapons.

Government workers loyal to the Iraqi tyrant bullied, harassed and spied on experts probing the country's nuclear, chemical and biological stocks.

Workers from Unscom - a UN body created to check Iraq's compliance with an order to destroy weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 Gulf War - were booted out of the country in 1998.

Last week, they insisted the return of UN inspectors was the only way to discover if Saddam has new weapons.

Lt Col Gabriele Kraatz-Wadsack, the German Armed Forces expert on biological weapons who worked as an on-site investigator in Iraq, said satellites or CIA missions could not be relied on for evidence.

She added: "You can discover new buildings but you cannot see what is going on inside."

She has revealed how Saddam's men blocked inspectors' efforts to uncover evidence. One incident came in July 1998 when she gained access to the command post of Saddam's Air Force in Baghdad.

She spotted a document in a safe marked "khas" - special - and took it. Her UN interpreter confirmed it appeared to contain evidence about weapons, including LD-250 bombs used to test anthrax and botulism.

But officers began yelling at her that it was irrelevant and she could not take it. Then the document was snatched from her.

- GERMAN intelligence has discovered that Iraq has adapted Soviet MiG-23 jets to fly unmanned and deliver biological and chemical weapons up to 620 miles away.

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