THE Thatcher government was reluctant to press for an international ban on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein obtaining chemical weapons for fear that it would leave itself open to claims of hypocrisy, newly released files have revealed.

Foreign Office papers, released by the National Archives at Kew, show that British officials received US intelligence in early 1983 suggesting that mustard gas was being manufactured at a plant in Iraq.

The Indian contractor which built the factory had acquired some of the equipment from a British firm, Weir Pumps, which supposedly believed that they were to be used for the production of pesticides.

It meant that Britain was arming both sides in the Iran-Iraq war.

The documents show that there was some discussion in the Foreign Office of trying to prevent Iraq acquiring chemical weapons (CW).

But officials noted that this could prove difficult as they were not banned under international treaties, even though their use was specifically prohibited under the Geneva protocol.

“The Iraqis could, therefore, legitimately say, as do the United States, that they need CW as a deterrent,” a Foreign Office paper noted.

“A move to ban CW sales to Iraq would therefore look very discriminatory unless we could show that Iraq had breached, or intended to breach, the Geneva protocol.”

Five years later, in 1988, Iraqi forces launched a lethal chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja as the conflict was entering its final phase.

The attack, which has been officially classified as an act of genocide, killed between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injured 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of them civilians.