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Iraq's ex-oil minister and key arms expert gives in

AFP, As-Saliyah
Former Iraqi oil minister Amer Mohammad Rashid al-Ubaidi, a core figure in Iraq's clandestine weapons programme, has surrendered to US-led coalition forces, US Central Command said yesterday.
General Rashid al-Ubaidi, a former adviser on arms to president Saddam Hussein, was number 47 on the coali-
tion's list of most wanted figures of the regime.
He "surrendered Monday and is currently in coalition custody," the Central Command (Centcom) said in a statement.
The 14th of the "most wanted" Iraqis to fall into American hands, he is identified as the six of spades in the pack of cards issued to troops to help track them down.
As well as being at the forefront of the development of Iraq's missiles and the systematic campaign to conceal it from the world, Rashid was married to Rihab Taba, known as "Dr Germ", the head of Iraq's secret biological weapons programme.
She has disappeared.
British-educated Rashid had been removed as oil minister last January.
But he resurfaced as presidential
adviser on arms issues at a January 28 news conference, silencing claims he had fallen out of favour with Saddam.
Rashid's dismissal was seen by oil experts as a gesture designed to appease Moscow after Iraq cancelled a major contract with Russian giant LUKoil.
The former chairman of Iraq's huge Military Industrialisation Corporation closely shadowed the
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work of UN inspection teams and was considered an expert on Iraq's UNsupervised disarmament.
He had been involved in meetings with UN arms inspectors as early as 1992, fronting the technical talks on the Iraqi side with the UN's Rolf Ekeus at a time when the country was denying possessing a biological warfare programme.
Former British UN weapons expert Tim Trevan relates in his book "Saddam's Secrets: The hunt for Iraq's hidden weapons" that it was Rashid who related how he personally had put out the president's order to destroy all documents about past weapons programmes in 1991.
Trevan describes Amer, whom he met repeatedly, as surprisingly tall and thin but not without a certain "roguish charm".
Rashid's surrender came after Centcom announced Sunday the head of the Iraqi body that liaised with UN arms inspectors had been captured.
General Hossam Mohammad Amin, former head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate (NMD), was number 49 on the US most wanted list and six of clubs.
He was one of two key interlocutors -- along with then presidential scientific adviser Amer al-Saadi -- of UN disarmament chiefs Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei in the months that preceded the US-led war.
He and Saadi became household faces for millions of television viewers around the world as they rebutted the multitude of US charges about Iraq's alleged banned weapons that sparked the war.
Saadi was still insisting that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when he surrendered to US forces on April 12, just three days after they seized Baghdad and put an end to Saddam's 24-year rule.
"I expect to be questioned, to be interrogated about the Iraqi armament programme," said Saadi, a rocket specialist and Saddam's chief weapons adviser.
"I tell you for history we have nothing, not to defend the regime," he said.
But neither Amin's and Saadi's protestations of innocence, nor what Amin once called Baghdad's "proactive cooperation" with arms inspectors who resumed work in Iraq last November after a four-year break, could stop the war.
All three men are crucial in Washington's hunt for the elusive "smoking gun".
US officials also hope the 14 wanted officials who have either turned themselves in or been captured -- including, former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz -- will help lead them to Saddam, whose whereabouts remain a mystery.