|
||||||||
 |
||||||||
| Blix report fuels doubts on weapons of mass destruction | ||||||||
| By James Politi in Washington, James Blitz in Evian and Mark Turner at the United Nations | ||||||||
| Published: June 2 2003 19:58 | Last Updated: June 2 2003 19:58 | ||||||||
|
||||||||
| .l { visibility: hidden; display: block; } US and British leaders were on Monday scrambling to explain why they had so far failed to find evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as United Nations weapons inspectors reported that Baghdad was handing over fresh information just hours before the US-led air strikes that began the war.
At the G8 summit in Evian, Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, was forced to deflect suggestions by a former cabinet minister that he had decided last September to go to war with Iraq, whether or not United Nations support was forthcoming. "The idea . . . that I made some secret agreement with George Bush last September that we would invade Iraq in any event at a particular time is completely and totally untrue," he said. Colin Powell, US secretary of state, said "it wasn't a figment of anyone's imagination" that Iraq possessed WMD. "There was no doubt in my mind as I went through the intelligence that the evidence was overwhelming," Mr Powell said in Rome, before heading to the Middle East. But both the US Congress and the UK parliament appear determined to hold their leaders to account on the issue. The Senate Intelligence Committee is likely to hold a public hearing this month to examine the administration's use of intelligence. And leading members of Mr Blair's Labour party are calling on the prime minister to explain himself to parliament. The new report by Hans Blix, chief UN weapons inspector, revealed that Baghdad supplied information on its illicit weapons programmes up to the eve of military hostilities. But, even at the end, Iraq failed to alleviate fundamental suspicions that it had something to hide. Unmovic, the UN inspection commission, has continued to analyse data in spite of its sidelining from the weapons hunt. In its latest quarterly report, it said Iraq proffered information on unmanned aircraft and its claimed destruction of anthrax as late as 19 March, hours before the first air strikes. But while "inspections, declarations and documents submitted by Iraq contributed to a better understanding of past weapons programmes, the long list of proscribed items unaccounted for was (not) shortened", the report says. The report says new data on the Al Hakam dump site, where Iraq claimed to have disposed of anthrax, indicated traces of biological material "consistent with Iraqi declarations". But the analysis did not "provide a quantification of the anthrax dumped in 1991 with the necessary degree of certainty" and "does not resolve the question regarding the total quantity of anthrax produced and destroyed by Iraq". |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
