IRAQ HAD NO WMDs - inspectors
Mark Oliver
Wednesday October 6, 2004
The Guardian
The group searching for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction publishes its final findings tonight and is expected to say it found no evidence of any illegal stockpiles.
Charles Duelfer, the head of the US-led team that spent 15-months searching for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, will deliver the Iraq Survey Group (ISG)'s final report to the US senate at around 1930BST.
US officials cited by the Washington Post today said that the 1,000-page document concludes that Saddam Hussein had the desire but not the capability to create weapons that could attack the west.
A leak of a draft of the report earlier this month said Saddam planned to rebuild his WMD capability had UN sanctions been lifted.
Critics of US and British policy towards Iraq will hope to use the ISG report as evidence that the policy of containment was working, while the White House and Downing Street will hope that the report draws a line under the politically damaging issue.
The prime minister, Tony Blair, appealed for the "fullness" of the ISG report to be analysed, rather than only one aspect of it.
Mr Blair, who is in Sudan on the first leg of a three-day Africa visit, was asked whether he would now go back to the Commons to correct any misleading impression about WMDs that he had given to MPs in the run-up to war.
"I think we have already been through this. I will say some more about it when the report is actually published. I hope what's actually published is the fullness of the ISG report and not simply one aspect of it," the prime minister told reporters.
Speaking in Baghdad, the foreign secretray, Jack Straw, said that the report shows that the threat from Saddam "in terms of his intentions ... [was] even starker than we have seen before".
Both George Bush and Tony Blair used allegations of WMD as a prime justification for last year's invasion of Iraq and officials are unlikely to be relishing the publication of the ISG's final findings.
Mr Bush has argued that it stopped a long-term risk posed by Saddam and insisted during his campaign for re-election that Iraq had been a "gathering" threat.
But the leaked draft - obtained by the New York Times - said that the only biological or chemical weapons Saddam's regime was working on before last year's invasion were small quantities of poisons, most likely for use in assassinations.
The draft does not rule out the possibility that WMD stockpiles could have been moved out of Iraq but there is apparently no evidence to suggest this. Earlier this year Mr Duelfer told the Guardian he expected the final report would leave some unanswered questions.
The failure to find stockpiles of WMD had been anticipated since the former head of the ISG, David Kay, quit in January. "We were almost all wrong" in thinking Saddam had stocks of such weapons, he said.
At the Labour party conference last week Mr Blair urged his party to put aside its differences over Iraq and focus on winning a third term in power.
Mr Blair told the conference he accepted that the evidence about Saddam having "actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong".
"I simply point out such evidence was agreed by the whole international community, not least because Saddam had used such weapons against his own people and neighbouring countries," he said.
"And the problem is I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam. The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power."
Today the shadow defence secretary, Nicholas Soames, said it would be "no great surprise" if the ISG reported that no evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons had been found.
"I don't think it alters the case for war one way or another personally, but I think it is difficult for the Americans and for the prime minister to explain," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
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