The US said on Thursday it was launching a programme to hire nearly 9,000 Iraqi scientists who worked on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programmes to keep them from selling their services to potential threats. Modelled on similar efforts with former Soviet scientists, the two-year programme will start with a US-funded office in Baghdad and an initial budget of $2 million for the first six months.US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said there may be hundreds of people formerly involved in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programmes eligible to take part in the programme, which could get up to $20 million more funding over time. ‘‘Our programme has two mutually reinforcing goals . to keep Iraqi scientists from providing their expertise to countries of concern or groups of concern and . to enable them to serve in the economic and technological rebuilding of Iraq,’’ he said.The threat Iraq could use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or give them to others was a central justification for US President George W. Bush’s decision to wage war on the country and to topple its former leader, Saddam Hussein.The US-led team scouring Iraq for such arms said in October it had yet to find stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons and said evidence pointed ‘‘very tentatively’’ to the resumption of a nuclear arms programme at a rudimentary level.Boucher said he did not know exactly what criteria the scientists would have to meet to be eligible, or whether members of the former ruling Baathist party would be excluded.(Reuters)
