Global Policy Forum

By John Hooper and Suzanne Goldenberg

Iraq has identified Germany as the country whose companies did most to help Baghdad in its drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction, said a German newspaper yesterday.

The leftwing Berlin daily, die tageszeitung, said it had obtained a copy of part of the document handed by Baghdad to the UN earlier this month which supplied details of its weapons programmes. The extract included a list of foreign companies, of which more than half - 80 - were German.

It was also said to contain the names of several private and state research laboratories as well as numerous individuals from Germany.

Die tageszeitung said the list featured British companies, too, although it did not say how many or name them.

It said there were 24 companies from the US - the second-highest tally.

It was not clear which companies were claimed to have sold what and whether they had knowingly or unknowingly contributed to Saddam Hussein's search for weapons of mass destruction. Nor was it clear which sales to Iraq were said to have been made in violation of arms control sanctions imposed by Germany after 1980.

Die tageszeitung's report nevertheless added an explosive new dimension to the crisis in German-US relations, stirred by Berlin's opposition to an American-led invasion.

Citing sources close to Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, the report said that the Bush administration hoped to show that German companies were continuing to cooperate with Saddam Hussein's regime.

US efforts were focussing on a German microelectronics firm about whose activities Berlin was apparently told about in 1999. Die tageszeitung said that some of the businesses listed had been dealing in conventional arms with Iraq until at least 2001.

The report also blew apart an unwritten agreement between the UN, governments and industry that companies which contributed, wittingly or unwittingly, to Iraq's arms build-up should not be named. The UN weapons inspection mission in New York spent several days purging the Iraqi declaration of company names.

Die tageszeitung cited 27 companies, including some of the best-known names in German industry such as Daimler-Benz (which merged with Chrysler of the US four years ago), MAN and Siemens.

A spokesman for Siemens said: "We really do not want to comment."

Representatives of Daimler-Chrysler and MAN agreed that their companies had had business ties with Iraq, but said they dated from a time when Iraq was an ally of the west.

American companies named by die tageszeitung included Hewlett Packard, Honeywell, Rockwell, Bechtel, ICS and Unisys.

In a dispatch from Geneva, the newspaper said the copy of the Iraqi report which it had obtained was made from the original handed over by the authorities in Baghdad and shipped to New York via Cyprus.

One UN diplomat who had read the report said that the German correspondent must have at least seen parts of the Iraqi declaration, which was supposed to remain secret after it was handed over on December 7. Officially, only Iraq and the five permanent members of the security council have seen the 12,000-page declaration in its entirety.

There were suspicions among UN diplomats of an American-inspired leak designed to embarrass Germany. "This is not news," the diplomat said. "One would guess that this is more mischievous than generally revealing." Mark Hibbs, Asia and Europe editor of Nucleonics Week, said: "If the Iraqis are still getting assistance, the last thing they are going to do is name the companies that are providing it."

Iraq buried purchases related to its weapons programmes in larger, seemingly innocuous orders from suppliers. It spent vast sums during the 1980s in pursuit of such weapons, said an Iraqi scientist who worked in Baghdad's nuclear programme for 17 years.

"What we are talking about is a $10bn expense over 10 years," said the scientist, who was in charge of procurement for the nuclear programme during the 1980s. "I would spend $10 just to get $1 of equipment that I needed."

· Three high court judges have rejected an attempt by CND to get a declaration that it would be against international law for Britain to wage war on Iraq without a further UN resolution.

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