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No WMDs yet, says US expert
25/09/2003 12:04 - (SA)
Washington - An interim report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction by former weapons inspector David Kay is not expected to reach any firm conclusions or rule anything in or out, the Central Intelligence Agency said on Wednesday.
Kay, who is leading the United States effort to account for Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programmes, was still receiving information from the field and his report would be only the "first progress report," said CIA spokesperson Bill Harlow.
"We expect it will reach no firm conclusions, nor will it rule anything in or out," he said.
The British Broadcast Corporation, citing a US government official, said the Iraq Survey Group that Kay was leading would report that it had found not even a "minute" amount of chemical, biological or nuclear materials, nor any delivery systems, nor laboratories for developing such weapons.
The report also would say it was highly unlikely the weapons were squirreled out of Iraq to countries like Syria before the war began, the same source told the BBC.
However the document would include computer programs, files, paperwork and pictures suggesting that Saddam's regime was developing a weapons of mass destruction programme, said the BBC.
Confident he will find evidence
High expectations have surrounded Kay's interim report, expected soon, because the government of President George W Bush has been unable to explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The threat of those weapons was the primary US rationale for invading the country and toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein.
But top administration officials - accused by opposition Democrats of hyping intelligence findings to justify the war - have said they are confident a massive intelligence-gathering effort led by Kay will find evidence that Iraq had active programmes on the eve of the war.
As recently as Monday, Bush said he believed Saddam buried or dispersed of his weapons before the US-led invasion. But he said it would take Kay "a while" to uncover the truth about what happened.
"I firmly believe he had weapons of mass destruction," Bush said in an interview late on Monday with the Fox network.
"I know he used them at one time, and I'm confident he had programmes that would enable him to have a weapon of mass destruction at his disposal."
Bush said he "told David Kay to go find the truth and to bring back reports based upon his own timetable that are solid reports about what he has found".
The former heads of the UN disarmament effort, Hans Blix and Rolf Ekeus, have concluded that Iraq probably destroyed its arsenal of chemical and biological weapons after the 1990-'91 Gulf War, but pretended to have them to deter attack.
Ekeus said Monday he believed that Iraq's strategy after 1991 was to maintain the capability to produce the banned weapons, but not actually produce or stockpile them.
- AFP
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