WASHINGTON – The final report from American weapons inspectors in Iraq says that Saddam Hussein lacked a stockpile of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons at the time of the coalition’s invasion in 2003, but that he worked with governments in the region and elsewhere to import items prohibited by U.N. sanctions.

The report for the first time provides details on how companies in China, France, and Russia – three nations that opposed the war – worked with Iraq’s Military Industrialization Corporation to purchase arms and items that undermined the letter and spirit of the sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

Indeed, individuals and companies from those three countries received more than half of the vouchers, approved by Mr. Hussein, to sell Iraqi oil on the open market, the report said.

The report also specifically identifies how a number of Iraq’s neighbors participated in helping to collapse the sanctions.

“Companies in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, UAE and Yemen assisted Saddam with the acquisition of prohibited items through deceptive trade practices,” the Americans reported. “In the case of Syria and Yemen, this included support from agencies or personnel within the government itself.”

Nonetheless, the CIA special adviser who led the inspections team told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that he did not expect the military to find any caches of weapons of mass destruction, giving the final word on one of President Bush’s key rationales for the war.

In his testimony, Charles Duelfer was particularly harsh regarding Mr. Hussein’s nuclear program, which senior officials, on the eve of last year’s invasion, predicted was much further along than it actually was.

“The analysis shows that despite Saddam’s expressed desire to retain the knowledge of his nuclear team, and his attempts to retain some key parts of the program, during the course of the following 12 years Iraq’s ability to produce a weapon decayed,” Mr. Duelfer said of the period after 1991.

The Kerry campaign has already seized on the report as further evidence of its candidate’s position that the Iraq war was a mistake. A senior adviser to Senator Kerry, Michael McCurry, said yesterday at a campaign stop in Colorado, “It is a very significant commentary on the mistaken case for war presented by this administration. It is very troubling that they could have been so wrong on something as fundamental as taking America to war.”

Mr. Bush said, however, that the report confirmed that the Iraqi dictator posed a danger and intended to rebuild his weapons of mass destruction once sanctions were lifted.

“There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks,” the president said at a campaign stop outside Philadelphia. “In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.”

Prime Minister Blair said on a visit to Ethiopia that the report showed that Mr. Hussein “was doing his best” to get around the international sanctions against him, according to a report by the British Press Association.

Mr. Duelfer’s conclusions on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction differ slightly from those of his predecessor, David Kay, who told Congress earlier this year that the world had been fooled by Mr. Hussein, opining that the Baghdad leader himself may have believed he had the deadly arms his technicians and scientists were too scared to admit Iraq lacked.

The final report from Mr. Duelfer says Mr. Hussein indeed was fully aware that he was in essence complying with the prohibitions on building long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction. The final report says the Iraqi dictator controlled every major decision-making process in the country, ranging from which individuals and companies would receive valuable vouchers to sell Iraqi oil on the open market to the government’s intricate scheme to erode the international sanctions.

“Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime,” the report says. It says that the starting of any WMD program “risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.”

Indeed, the sanctions were so eroded by the fall of 2001 that Mr. Hussein’s Military Industrialization Corporation formed a partnership with a Russian general, Anatoliy Ivanovich Makros, to smuggle high-tech military equipment, such as radar jammers and night-vision goggles, to Baghdad on weekly charter flights from Damascus. Also, the Russian concern Rosoboron export offered to sell Iraq long- and medium-range missile systems through sending the systems to third countries with phony end-user certificates.

The report also finds that, as early as 1998, French arms-makers attempted to renew their relationship with Iraq, curtailed in 1991 due to the Gulf War. The “procurement transactions included offers and contracts for conventional weapons systems and negotiations for possible WMD-related mobile laboratories,” the report says. In one instance, efforts to provide spare parts for the Roland II surface-to-air missile continued until only 23 days before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.

The report on Iraqi military procurement also supports the thesis of a former ambassador, Marc Palmer, who has written that dictatorships often cooperate despite ideological and cultural differences. Two of the largest suppliers to Mr. Hussein’s conventional military were North Korea and Belarus, two countries with human-rights records that would even rival Mr. Hussein’s. Even President Lukashenko of Belarus personally promoted a company, Belarus Afta, to provide Iraq with advanced radar systems.

In some cases, Iraq’s illegal procurement of arms despite the sanctions was also facilitated by high government officials in the Mideast.

“Former Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Tlas, routinely signed false end-user certificates for weapons dealers, generally for a fee of 12 to 15 percent of the total contract,” the Duelfer report says.

The report also lists concerns about possible participation in the military trade with Iraq by American allies, such as Turkey, Taiwan, and India. The report is particularly harsh in its assessment of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It says Jordanian banks held the accounts of Iraqi procurement companies; the Jordanian port of Aqaba was often used to ship illicit materials, and Jordanian companies offered – and in some cases sold – advanced communications equipment and missile parts to Iraq right up to February 2003, a month before the war.