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US report finds no WMDs
LONDON: US arms experts are to confirm in the next fortnight that Saddam Hussein
's regime had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction when it was invaded
last year, the daily Guardian said yesterday.
In a report, it said it has learned that Iraq Survey Group set up by the US
administration - charged with finding proof of Saddam's quest for chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons - will deliver its report "in two weeks' time".
"It will draw the final conclusion that there are no WMD in the country,
although the threat of Saddam was real," it said.
The Iraq Survey Group, comprising more than 1,000 mainly US intelligence and
weapons experts, fanned out across Iraq in July 2003, four months after the
US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.
In an interim report in October last year, its chief David Kay told the US
Senate it had yet to find stocks of WMD, but added that it was not at a point
where it could say definitely that such weapons did not exist.
Kay reiterated his position when he resigned three months later.
The Guardian said the release of the conclusions would put British Prime
Minister Tony Blair in an awkward position just as his governing Labour Party
holds it annual conference.
Blair sought to justify taking Britain into the Iraq war by citing the threat of
Iraqi WMD and the danger they might fall into terrorist hands.
In July, a British inquiry into pre-war intelligence said Iraq - which under
Saddam defied a string of UN resolutions on WMD - most likely possessed no
useable weapons of mass destruction before the March 2003 invasion.
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