Clinton backs Bush on Iraq

2004-06-20 18:10

Washington - Ex-president Bill Clinton backed the US decision to invade Iraq, saying significant amounts of chemical and biological weapons were unaccounted for, but said in an interview released on Sunday that he would have waited for UN weapons inspectors to finish their job.

"I have repeatedly defended President (George W) Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the UN inspections were over," Clinton told Time magazine.

"I would not have done it until after (chief UN weapons inspector) Hans Blix finished his job," he said in the interview given days before Tuesday's publication of his memoirs.

Clinton said substantial quantities of botulinum and aflatoxin, as well as chemical nerve gases like VX and ricin, were unaccounted for when UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998.

"I never really thought he'd (use them). What I was far more worried about was that he'd sell this stuff or give it away," he said.

"So I thought the president had an absolute responsibility to go to the UN and say, 'Look, guys, after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process'," Clinton said.

"I don't believe he went in there for oil. We didn't go in there for imperialist or financial reasons.

"We went in there because he bought the Wolfowitz-Cheney analysis that the Iraqis would be better off, we could shake up the authoritarian Arab regimes in the Middle East, and our leverage to make peace between the Palestinians and Israelis would be increased," he said.

Vice President Dick Cheney and deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz were staunch advocates of the invasion.

Clinton said it was too soon to tell whether the results of the war were worth the cost.

"If you have a pluralistic, secure, stable Iraq, the people of Iraq will be better off, and it might help the process of internal reform in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere," Clinton said.

"Right now, getting rid of Saddam's tyranny, ironically, has made Iraq more vulnerable to terrorism coming in from the outside. But any open society is going to be more vulnerable than any tyranny to that," he said.

- AFP