World IN BRIEF : IRAQ : Senior Official Who Defected Goes Home

The most senior Iraqi official ever to defect returned home, ending a bizarre six-month exile in which he had vowed to topple Saddam Hussein, his father-in-law. Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Majid and his brother, Col. Saddam Kamel, crossed the desert highway into Iraq with their wives--both daughters of the Iraqi leader--and most of the 30 people who defected with them. An official at the Iraqi Embassy in Amman, Jordan, said Majid would not be punished. Majid, the former chief of Iraqi weapons development, was said to have provided the United Nations with a treasure of information about Iraq’s arsenal, as well as about the organization of Hussein’s government. In Washington, Clinton administration officials strenuously disputed any notion that Majid duped U.S. intelligence services or fed them disinformation.