"Everything was destroyed, such that the program couldn't be restarted at the time at all, and it never restarted," he claimed.

"And Iraq did not have, would not have had the resources under [U.N.] sanctions to continue. ... We had orders to hand over the equipment to the Republican Guards, to the special Republican Guards, and they had orders to destroy the equipment that we handed over to them."

He also claimed that there was also no request to do more research.

Of the 500-ton stockpile of yellowcake uranium ore stored at al Tuwaitha, Jafar said only that the nuclear material had been purchased from Niger in the 1980s. And he made no mention of the 1.8 tons of low enriched uranium flown out of the facility by the U.S. Energy Department in June.

Jafar also failed to address findings by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which concluded last month:

"Iraq was procuring dual use equipment that had potential nuclear applications."

The Senate's investigation found that, "Iraq had kept its cadre of nuclear weapons personnel trained and in positions that could keep their skills intact for eventual use in a reconstituted nuclear program."

The Iraqi physicist declined to challenge the testimony of top U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who told Congress in March that Iraq had been "preserving and expanding its knowledge to design and develop nuclear weapons" throughout the 1990s.

One al Tuwaitha laboratory, Duelfer said, "was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development."

Duelfer's contentions were bolstered by satellite photos published in the Washington Post in 2002 that showed new construction at the sprawling 23,000-acre facility.

U.N. weapons inspectors who had interviewed Jafar before the U.S. attacked Iraq described him as evasive about Saddam's nuclear program, saying his refusal to come clean fueled suspicions that Iraq had continued its nuclear research.

Editor's note: