Doubts over Iraq's WMD - report

2003-05-31 11:17

London - British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed doubts in private over public claims they were making about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war, the Guardian said on Saturday in a report denied by the Foreign Office.

The left-wing British daily said the two men voiced concerns about intelligence on Iraqi weapons during a private meeting in New York.

The encounter came shortly before a key UN Security Council meeting on February 5, when Powell presented what he claimed was clear evidence that Iraq was concealing banned weapons, the Guardian said.

Its story was based on information from a unnamed diplomatic source, who the paper said had read a transcript of the conversation between Straw and Powell.

The transcript recorded Straw voicing concern that assertions being made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush about Saddam Hussein's arsenals could not be proved.

The document quoted Powell as allegedly saying he was "apprehensive" about intelligence assessments containing circumstantial evidence, and telling Straw he hoped the facts, when they came out, would not "explode in their faces".

The Guardian, which opposed the US-led war against Iraq, said that the transcript appeared to have been leaked by diplomats who were supportive of the use of force against Baghdad at the time, but now feel they were lied to about its justification.

But the Foreign Office dismissed the Guardian report as "simply untrue", and insisted that "no such meeting took place" between Powell and Straw.

A spokesperson said: "The Foreign Secretary has always been clear of the strength of the evidence against Iraq in respect of weapons of mass destruction - much of it in UN sources - and has often referred to this."

The British media has in recent days insisted on explanations over how the prime minister's office allegedly exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

In Warsaw on Friday, Blair dismissed as "completely absurd" the idea that intelligence agencies fabricated evidence that Iraq had such weapons in order to justify war.

The US and its allies are to launch a fresh effort next week to find weapons of mass destruction, sending in a 1 300-member team to Iraq to take up a hunt that has turned up no banned weapons so far. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA