"All we had after the war from that nuclear power program were ruins, memoirs, and reports of what we had done...on the nuclear weapon side I am more than definitely sure nothing has been done," he told Reuters in an interview.

"For (U.S. President George W.) Bush to continue brandishing this image of a superhuman Iraqi nuclear power program is a great fallacious misinformation."

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell pledged this week to deliver "compelling" proof to the U.N. Security Council this week that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction from U.N. inspectors who have been combing the country for banned biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

But Khadduri, who left the country in 1998, said while he cannot speak on possible biological or chemical programs, he believes the scientific expertise and resources needed to produce nuclear weapons have been out of Iraq's reach for more than a decade.

The former nuclear scientist, who has spoken in the past to U.N. weapons inspectors, said he decided to speak out publicly after the chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix sharply criticized Iraq last month for not doing enough to comply with inspections.

Khadduri said the combined effect of the Gulf War, economic sanctions and the work of earlier U.N. inspection teams decimated the nuclear program by scattering staff and destroying its infrastructure.

"To re-initiate such a program, it is not a simple project, it's a huge project. There is no management to lead this rejuvenation. The highly qualified management team has simply hibernated," he said.

"Can we hide something as huge an enterprise as a nuclear power program? Look at the establishments deployed in North Korea...it's an impossibility."

U.S., BRITISH TRAINING

The soft-spoken scientist, who now teaches computer science at a Toronto college, said he was not speaking out under any pressure from his home country. Rather, he felt compelled to correct what he says is "misinformation" being put forward about Iraq's nuclear program as the United States amasses and troops and armor in the region.

Khadduri said he was particularly upset by a speech from Bush last year which touched on the nuclear issue.

"He seems to be exaggerating the role of the Iraqi nuclear weapon program for war purposes. I could see that since August clearly and I couldn't contain myself," he said.

Khadduri began work on the program after earning a masters degree in physics from the University of Michigan. He later completed a doctorate in nuclear reactor technology from University of Birmingham in Britain.

At first, the program focused mainly on the use of nuclear energy for power generation. Khadduri said that changed in 1981 after Israeli jets destroyed the country's Osirak nuclear reactor. Among the pilots flying those jets was Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who died when the Columbia shuttle broke up over Texas on Saturday.

At that point, he said the program shifted to focus on producing nuclear weapons. At one point Saddam Hussein put his son-in-law Hussein Kamel in charge in order to improve results.

Khadduri said he worked in the mid-level management of the program and had an intimate knowledge of its operation. His work included procuring the technical information needed to build a bomb, as well as maintaining records and reports on its progress.

He said the program gleaned much of its information from research on the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bombs dropped on Japan. In a sense he says, the Iraqi scientists were trying to "reinvent the wheel".