SOME PRETTY SPECIFIC ALLEGATIONS

An exiled Syrian dissident has reiterated claims that Iraqi biological and chemical weapons were smuggled into Syria just before the start of the United States-led attack on Iraq in March last year.

"The Iraqi chemical and biological weapons were at first put in (Syrian) Presidential Guard depots, at its headquarters in Damascus," Nizzar Nayyouf told the French-based Internet news site Proche-Orient.info, which specialises in news from the Middle East.

He said the operation took place "between February and March 2003, when Saddam Hussein realised that the Americans had decided to act" against Iraq.

The operation took place under supervision of General Zoul-Himla Shalich, the head of the guard in Syria and considered close to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Nayyouf said, citing as his sources "superior officers who themselves took part in the operation."

'I know they were still there January 7. I don't know anything else'

Nayyouf first made his allegations in early January on British television, but US officials quickly played them down. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said there had not been "any hard evidence that such a thing happened," but refused to completely dismiss the charges.

In his comments to the website, Nayyouf repeated the accusations made on Channel Five TV that the weapons were transported from Iraq to neighbouring Syria "in ambulances of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent."

He added that the weapons were later taken to "three highly-secured sites in central Syria: Misyaf, Tal Sinan and Shinsar... I know they were still there January 7. I don't know anything else."