Defectors' reports on WMD embellished

Speaking ahead of the release Friday of a US Senate report castigating the CIA for faulty intelligence on Iraq, Muhammad al-Zubaidi said the defectors' accounts were beefed up by members of the Iraqi National congress led by Ahmad Chalabi.

"They intentionally exaggerated all the information so they would drag the United States into war," Zubaidi, an ex-INC member who split with the group in April 2003 and is now exiled in Lebanon, told the daily in an interview.

Zubaidi said that after the United States declared its war on terrorism in the wake of the September 11, 2001 suicide plane attacks in Washington and New York, he was asked by the INC to find evidence of outlawed weapons in Iraq.

He said that over three months, he and a team of 75 to 100 people gathered statements from defectors claiming to have knowledge of Iraq's secret weapons programs.

Zubaidi said the statements made by the defectors to his team differed from those they later made to US intelligence officials after having met with INC members.

He contends that the defectors were prepped by the INC to make some of the most provocative claims on weapons of mass destruction and contacts between Iraqi officials and members of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization.