Saddam ordered staff to hide arms, spies tell Blair

Tony Blair has been told that Iraqi officials have begun systematically hiding documents and other material relating to weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) after deciding that such weapons are essential to the security of the Saddam Hussein regime.

Iraqi scientists, supply officers and civil servants – some quite junior – in departments involved in weapons programmes have been told to hide documents at home and in some cases bury chemicals in nearby plots of land, according to the latest assessment (in part based on secret intelligence) given to the Prime Minister and a handful of his most senior colleagues.

The reports say the government employees and Baath Party officials have been warned they face execution if any of the evidence goes missing. Intelligence analysts regard the ploy as an attempt to evade the United Nations inspection team led by Hans Blix.

The Prime Minister has also been told that after some debate in the upper echelons of President Saddam's hierarchy the view in the regime is that retention of chemical and biological weapons is vital not only to underpin his regional power but also to maintain internal repression. This view, forged by the regime's use of mustard and nerve agents in the massacre of Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in 1988, has been reinforced by the regime's fears of possible uprisings, including Shia-led revolts in the Sunni heartlands, according to the reports. If they are accurate, they cast serious doubt on whether President Saddam intends to own up to the existence of WMDs.

The analysts believe he has developed a strategy in which the Iraqis will try to distract the Blix team by showering it with offers to show it selected facilities that are suspected of "dual use" purposes, which the Iraqis can then demonstrate are being used innocently for, say, paint and petrochemical production. If that is the case, such tactics may founder on Dr Blix's determination to draw up his list of sites.

Such leaks of intelligence-based material –in this case 10 days before the 8 December deadline by which Iraq is required by the UN to give a full list of WMD programmes – need to be treated with caution since there have been cases of misinformation in the past, sometimes directed at Iraqi opinion. During the Gulf War, Western diplomats disseminated reports, which turned out to be unfounded, that the flight of Iraqi aircraft to Iran had followed an unsuccessful coup in Baghdad.

But highly placed Whitehall sources insist the assessments have given them an authentic, if sometimes impressionistic, update of the mood within the regime and the country – including the reaction of President Saddam to limited but growing signs of unrest.

He has begun shoring up loyalty among those around him by distributing Toyota Avalon cars to senior party officials while his own security guards have been given South Korean Kias, according to the reports. Other officials have been given strips of land in southern Iraq, which they then quickly sell. But the reports also say a covert opinion research exercise by the regime in several cities has established a surprising level of support for regime change.

The research has mainly been the work of Kurds secretly loyal to President Saddam, because dissident Iraqis are more likely to speak freely to them. Remarkably, the assess-ment has been given in unexpurgated form to the Iraqi dictator.

The findings are also said to underline deep-seated fears among the population of both a long war and of the possible disintegration of the country.

The assessment notes anti-regime slogans have been posted on public buildings and that there have been small demonstrations about food shortages. A protest by families of prisoners whom President Saddam did not free in his amnesty last month did not quickly disperse, as would be normal.

It reports that efforts to ensure loyalty among security forces have been undermined by low, and in some cases unpaid wages. In one city police officers have not been paid since September.