WASHINGTON, Oct 6: Outspoken former weapons’ inspector Scott Ritter said US and British intelligence agents took part in inspections of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s palaces during the 1990s, Newsweek reported in its latest issue.

Ritter, 40, a former intelligence officer in the US Marines, said CIA agents, and members of Britain’s intelligence service MI6, were employed among the weapons inspectors for intelligence-gathering purposes the last time Saddam’s palaces were searched.

Several of the agents were gathering intelligence on where Saddam lived and worked, and where probably he took shelter during air raids — aimed at eliminating the Iraqi leader rather than his weapons, Ritter told Newsweek in its editions due on newsstands on Monday.

“Embedded in the team was a British MI6 case officer, whose job was to recruit a senior Iraqi official,” Ritter told the newsweekly.

“We were trying to use the inspection team’s access to achieve this recruitment.

“Also embedded in the team were CIA officers, whose job was to do a structural-intelligence analysis of Saddam Hussein’s bunkers, and to pinpoint the residences and officers of every senior Iraqi government official.”

Ritter, whose credibility was damaged after he accepted 400,000 dollars from an Iraqi-American businessman to fund a documentary critical of US policy, was once dubbed a “cowboy” by UN staff and diplomats in Baghdad for his intrusive inspection procedures.

He said the attempt at recruiting Iraqi officials failed.

Ritter resigned from the United Nations in August 1998, citing a lack of UN and US support for his tough disarmament methods which rattled the Iraqis.

More recently, however, he has become increasingly critical of US policies towards Iraq.

Ritter claims that UN inspectors — who left the country four years ago — had found no evidence that Iraq was seeking to re-acquire capabilities in weapons of mass destruction.—AFP