US forces have taken into custody the British-educated Iraqi microbiologist Rihab Rashid Taha Al-Azzawi Al-Tikriti, who spearheaded the biological warfare programme under toppled president Saddam Hussein, officials said on Monday.

Taha, known as 'Dr Germ', received her doctorate from Britain's University of East Anglia before guiding Iraq's biological arms development.

She was taken into custody over the weekend, said a defence official on condition of anonymity.

Taha is married to former Iraqi oil minister Amir Mohammed Rasheed, who surrendered to US forces on April 28. Ranked No 47 on the US list of the 55 most-wanted Iraqis, he ran Iraq's military industries until becoming oil minister in 1995. Taha is not on the list.

"She has a background in biological weapons, and so that is obviously important to us," said Major Brad Lowell, a spokesman for the US Central Command.

Another woman scientist linked to Saddam's biological weapons programme had been apprehended last week. American-educated microbiologist Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, the only woman on the list of most-wanted Iraqis, is known as 'Mrs Anthrax'.

In an interview this year with ABC News, Taha said her work helped protect Iraqis from Israel. "We haven't done anything to harm other people. It is our right to be capable enough to defend ourselves -- all what we have done is just a deterrent. Nothing more than that."

The UN arms inspection process played a key role in her personal life. She met her husband during talks on UN inspections in 1993 in New York, and married him after he divorced his then wife.

In the early 1980s, she studied plant toxins at the University of East Anglia before returning to her native country to work on biological weapons. She is in her late 40s.