Posted 1:16 PM by Floyd

One of the charges levelled against Saddam Hussein's regime is that private interviews were not provided with Iraqi scientists. Lately Hussein has relented, though the first "private interview" was with one of the Iraqi minders who had previously supervised interviews. But the issue is moot if the scientists do not want to cooperate. I found this surprising information at the end of a Telegraph article on the Iraqi crisis:

Dr Blix is holding talks with senior Iraqi officials in Baghdad this weekend. While his inspectors have now been granted private access to a number of Iraqi scientists, one of their prime targets - the English-trained woman who used to run Saddam's lethal biological weapons programme - said that she will refuse to talk to them.

In an exclusive interview to be broadcast on BBC1's Panorama at 10.30 tonight, Rihab Taha, who studied at the University of East Anglia and is known as "Dr Germ", said that she does not trust the inspectors.

"It is a human right that if you don't want to speak to anyone, no one will oblige you or force you." Speaking of her work on biological weapons, Dr Taha added: "It is our right to have a capability to defend ourselves and to have something as a deterrent."