He believes that some Iraqi generals would have moved against the regime if US and British air strikes had occurred in February.He says the Iraqi leader will move quickly to improve his relations with Arab governments in Egypt, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. He does not think that President Saddam will give up his weapons of mass destruction, not least because they played a key role in the defeat of Iran by Iraq in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war.General Samarra'i, who then headed Iraqi military intelligence against Iran, paints a chilling picture of President Saddam's use of chemical weapons, culminating in a plan to put chemical warheads on missiles fired at Tehran, the Iranian capital, in 1988. He says the Iraqi leader was worried that poison gas, being heavier than air, would keep low and Iranians would be able to surviveby sealing doors and windows and getting into high buildings.The plan devised by Iraqi military staff officers was first to send in Iraqi fighter-bombers to strike at Tehran. General Samarra'i says: "They planned to bombard the city with bombs which would break all the glass in the windows. This would allow the gas to spread."At Halabja, a Kurdish city in Iraq, some 7,000 Kurds were killed by Iraqi poison gas in 1988 and those that survived continue to suffer genetic defects.Other Iraqi observers believe that President Saddam's determination to keep some chemical and biological weapons comes from their successful use against Iran. One, who was in touch with the Iranian leadership in 1988, says Iraq sent a private message to them saying that it might put chemical warheads on its missiles. He says this was a significant reason why Iran sued for peace.The general says that Iraq estimated Iran suffered 90,000 casualties from chemical weapons in the war.

Iran says that the figure is 50,000, of whom 10 per cent died This excludes the Kurdish civilians killed at Halabja. A UN mission of inquiry, which visited Iran and Iraq at the time, put the blame on both sides, though it did not visit Halabja. Western criticism of the use of poison gas against Iranians was muted.Currently General Samarra'i says that Iraq has about 40 missiles left. He says a UN figure of two or three is based on the number delivered by the Soviet Union before the Gulf War, but there are others which were made out of Soviet spare parts or which were largely manufactured in Iraq itself. He says they are accurate only to within some three kilometres, but this does not matter in the case of chemical or biological warheads. He believes that there are about 100 cases of biological weapons which could be put in warheads.Between 1986 and 1989 General Samarra'i was the chief military contact between the CIA in the US Embassy in Baghdad and the Iraqi Army. He says he met with the CIA once or twice a week to be shown US satellite pictures of Iranian positions and more-detailed maps based on the pictures showing US analysis of what they represented.

In 1989 President Saddam, after the defeat of Iran, ordered that contacts with the CIA cease.. ISRAEL'S public service television is fighting off angry demands from right-wing ministers and MPs to pull a critical 22-part series on the first 50 years of the Jewish state. The series, Tkumah ("Rebirth"), has shone a harsh light on Israel's treatment of its Arab minority and its oriental Jewish immigrants in the 11 episodes screened so far. A surprise hit with Israelis, it mercilessly showed how national heroes such as Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan squandered the opportunity for peace in the years between the 1967 and 1973 wars. A programme to be screened next month will depict what Israelis call "terror" and the Palestinians "armed struggle" from both sides of the barricade, using footage from PLO archives captured during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, as well as interviews with Israeli victims and fighters.Yehoram Gaon, a popular actor and singer who introduced each episode, sparked the row by resigning from the series.Limor Livnat, the Likud Communications Minister, demanded that the broadcasting authority take it off the air immediately and urged the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to intervene. "I don't know any normal nation that would present the other side's position so favourably," she said "That ... has caused severe damage to the state of Israel."Hanan Porat, a settler MP, called on Tkumah's producers to make a second series from a "national" perspective.

Moshe Peled, the Deputy Education Minister, accused the documentary makers of presenting half-truths in the guise of history.The authority rejected these strictures, though it will follow the more controversial episodes with a live debate One veteran broadcaster said privately: "We have grown up. We're no longer living in the days when the news was controlled from the prime minister's office."Spokesman Zvi Lidar told The Independent: "We knew we were picking at open wounds But each programme was made with the help of ... historians representing different political views and different approaches to history."Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, who directed the episode on armed struggle, defended her treatment. "At times the film adopted the other side's point of view and those are pictures we are not used to seeing," she said.

"One of the objectives was to understand that blood was spilt on the other side as well."Ilan Pape, a historian at the university of Haifa who has challenged the Zionist version of the Israeli state's formative years, said Tkumah was a sign that such criticism had become legitimate. "It will be more difficult to limit the debate now," he said.. PICKING their way through a crowded field of mad, bad and frankly unlikely candidates, Filipino voters are hardly spoiled for choice in the forthcoming presidential election. They may well opt for a hard-drinking, womanising gambler, or possibly a candidate often portrayed as barmy. There's also a "Dirty Harry-type" police chief, a former television reader who describes herself as "Princess Diana incarnate", and, as ever, the world's most famous shoe hoarder, Imelda Marcos. The field is so devoid of candidates showing the slightest interest in policy or integrity that the big money has been reluctantly dumped on Jose de Venecia, the almost aggressively uninspiring Speaker of the House of Representatives and choice of the outgoing President, Fidel Ramos. Mr de Venecia is the epitome of the old-style wheeler dealer politician and fixer.But, and this is important, he is not a well-known drunk, nor would he be likely to turn up at official functions with a mistress.The same cannot be said for the front runner in the campaign, Joseph "Erap" Estrada.