NEW YORK, Aug 1: A former CIA officer charged in a lawsuit that he had informed the spy agency that an informant in the spring of 2001 told him that Iraq had abandoned a major element of its nuclear weapons programme, but the agency did not share the information with other agencies or with senior policy makers, said the New York Times on Monday.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, the former CIA officer, whose name remains secret, said that the informant told him that Iraq’s uranium enrichment programme had ended years earlier and that centrifuge components from the scuttled programme were available for examination and even purchase, the newspaper said.

The officer, an employee at the agency for more than 20 years, including several years in a clandestine unit assigned to gather intelligence related to illicit weapons, was fired in 2004.

In his lawsuit, he says his dismissal was punishment for his reports questioning the agency’s assumptions on a series of weapons-related matters. Among other things, he charged that he had been the target of retaliation for his refusal to go along with the agency’s intelligence conclusions.

Michelle Neff, a CIA spokeswoman, said the agency would not comment on the lawsuit the paper said. It was not possible to verify independently the former officer’s allegations concerning his reporting on illicit weapons.

“His information on the Iraqi nuclear programme, described as coming from a significant source, would have arrived at a time when the CIA was starting to reconsider whether Iraq had revived its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The agency’s conclusion that this was happening, eventually made public by the Bush administration in 2002 as part of its rationale for war, has since been found to be incorrect.”

The Times said while the existence of the lawsuit has previously been reported, details of the case have not been made public because the documents in his suit have been heavily censored by the government and the substance of the claims are classified. The officer’s name remains secret, in part because disclosing it might jeopardize the agency’s sources or operations.

Several people with detailed knowledge of the case provided information to the Times about his allegations, but insisted on anonymity because the matter is classified.