BERLIN: 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 on Tuesday.

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 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.

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.

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.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.