Saddam acknowledges Iraq had weapons of mass destruction

President Saddam Hussein said today that Iraq used to have weapons of mass destruction to defend against Iran and Israel but no longer holds them, the Iraqi News Agency said.

The agency said Saddam made the remarks during a meeting with a Tunisian envoy.

"We are not weapons collectors," Saddam said. "But we had these weapons for purposes of self-defence when we were at war with Iran for eight years and when the Zionist entity (Israel) was, and it still is, a threat."

Iraq and Iran fought a ruinous 1980-88 war in which chemical weapons are known to have been used.

"When Saddam Hussein says he has no weapons of mass destruction, he means what he says," Saddam said.

The Iraqi leader said his country had fully cooperated with U.N. inspectors seeking to verify that Iraq had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction.

"We have a real desire to rid our region and the whole world of weapons of mass destruction," Saddam said, calling on the US to set an example by destroying its own weapons of mass destruction first.