US investigators have released accounts of the questioning of Saddam Hussein, offering a goldmine of historical and personal details on the Iraqi leader.

The documents released under freedom of information rules are from interviews and informal conversations he had in US custody with the FBI in early 2004.

Saddam Hussein said he refused to allow UN weapons inspectors into Iraq to stop Iran knowing how weak it had become.

And he scoffed at reports that he used body doubles to confuse assassins.

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The former leader appears to view Iran as the biggest threat to Iraq, which was why he says he kept UN inspectors out in the late 1990s, even though he had already got rid of all his weapons of mass destruction.

He preferred to risk American anger, he said, than to let Iran know how weak Iraq had become.

"In his opinion, the UN inspectors would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq," one document says.

Saddam Hussein said he allowed the inspectors in later, in the hope of heading off the invasion in 2003, but by then it was too late because the US had already made up its mind to attack.

He admitted it was a mistake not to have allowed the UN to document Iraq's destruction of its weapons of mass destruction, which he said had been completed by 1998.

That process, he said, had left Iraq weakened, while Iran was free to develop its armaments.

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