Blair Raised "False Expectation" on Iraqi Weapons, Says Expert
LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair's government raised a "false expectation" about Iraq's pre-war weaponry, a move which undermined the global fight against proliferation, a former senior military intelligence official said.
"Personally I don't think they will find stockpiles in Iraq and (people) have been given a false expectation that they were there," the British expert, Brian Jones, told the Independent daily.
Saddam Hussein's refusal to give up his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was cited by Blair as the main reason to invade Iraq alongside the United States last March.
In a key part of its attempts to persuade a sceptical Britain of the case for war, the government said in a September 2002 dossier that Saddam's regime could "deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so".
But Jones told the Independent that the intelligence assessment which included the controversial 45-minute claim had merely outlined "possible scenarios" rather than detailing any specific threat posed by Iraq.
"The fact was, it was so nebulous that there was nothing you could really hang your hat on," said Jones, who was in charge of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of Britain's Defence Intelligence Staff until January 2003.
He warned that the public would be far more sceptical in future if the government tried to warn of another WMD threat elsewhere in the world.
"People will say WMD in general was never a problem because the whole thing was a political sleight of hand," Jones told the Independent.
Last week, he told the same newspaper that Britain's spy chiefs ignored warnings from leading experts that it was not certain Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons before the war.
Jones claimed that the September 2002 dossier "was misleading about Iraq's capabilities."
Last Tuesday Blair, under increasing pressure to explain why no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, announced that an investigation would into be held into any intelligence failures.
However, the government was forced on the defensive after Blair admitted he had not known days before war was launched whether the 45-minute claim referred to missiles capable of reaching other countries or shorter-range "battlefield" weapons.
The issue is continuing to dog Blair despite the publication of a judicial report by judge Lord Brian Hutton which exonerated the government of making the 45-minute claim while knowing it to be wrong.
© Copyright 2004 AFP
Published on Tuesday, February 10, 2004 by Agence France Presse
commondreams.org |
