From the South China Morning Post this week in 1990
London, December 17
The Iraqi President, Mr Saddam Hussein, has acquired enough Western technology to produce a nuclear bomb in as little as a year, a leading London newspaper reported.
The Sunday Times Insight team says Mr Saddam's scientists have built a factory for producing nuclear centrifuges, key equipment for making nuclear devices. They have also built a secret uranium enrichment laboratory in the outskirts of Baghdad. The report came a month before the January 15 UN deadline authorising force to remove Iraq from Kuwait. Iraq has said it does not recognise the resolution.
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2 1990, American intelligence agencies, including the CIA, carried out an emergency review of Mr Saddam's nuclear capability
The new evidence suggests Iraq is three years closer to nuclear capability than Western intelligence agencies had thought.