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US finds no sign of Iraqi WMDs
03/10/2003 07:14 - (SA)
Washington - The United States has found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a top arms expert said on Thursday, despite "substantial evidence" that Saddam Hussein intended to make chemical and biological arms.
The report by David Kay, the head of the US team of 1 200 experts scouring Iraq for WMDs, is likely to be seized upon by opponents of the war that brought down Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
But Kay appealed for up to nine months more to complete his work, and President George W Bush has asked Congress for $600m to fund Kay's search, on top of the reported $300m already spent.
"We have not found at this point actual weapons," the expert told reporters after giving closed-door briefings to the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on the work of the Iraq Survey Group.
'Evidence of intent'
But he added, "we have found substantial evidence of an intent of senior level Iraqi officials, including Saddam, to continue production at some future point in time of weapons of mass destruction."
He insisted the findings did not mean the United States had concluded there were no weapons.
Kay said the experts had found "a large body of continuing activities and equipment that were not declared to the UN inspectors when they returned in November of last year."
This included "substantial equipment and activities in the chemical and biological area, a much more substantial activity in the missile area."
According to Kay, Saddam's regime was carrying out "a very full-scale programme" that would have extended the range of its missiles beyond 1 000km, capable of reaching Ankara, Cairo, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh from Iraqi territory.
Kay estimated that it would take between six and nine more months to give a firm indication of the state of the Iraqi weapons programme.
"Believe me, if I wanted to go into business, I would go into the metal detection business in Iraq. I think for 100 years they will be digging up the relics of Saddam's empire that are buried over the country."
Don't be surprised by surprises
He added: "My advice to everyone is still don't be surprised by surprises in Iraq."
Kay's report had been much-awaited as criticism has increased at home and abroad over the justification given by President George W Bush for launching the Iraq war. Bush said before the war that Saddam's biological and chemical weapons were a threat which could not be avoided.
Asked about Kay's remarks, a senior White House official who declined to be named replied: "Keep in mind it is a progress report, not a final reckoning of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes."
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he still had not seen anything that leads me to believe that the intelligence that I relied on is necessarily, in the aggregate, inaccurate."
"It's not clear that it (the intelligence) was off by a little bit or a mile at this stage. That's yet to be seen."
"If it is off by a lot that will be unfortunate," he said.
And in London, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said in a statement "Kay's report confirms how dangerous and deceitful the regime was, and how the military action was indeed both justified and essential to remove the dangers."
Britain was the main US ally in the Iraq war and Prime Minister Tony Blair also faces widespread criticism over the evidence used to back the case for the invasion.
But Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Kay's statement had raised questions about the Bush administration's general war doctrine as well as the reasons for invading Iraq, where there are still about 130 000 US troops.
Extraordinary decision
"I just think it's extraordinary that a decision was made to go to war and that we were told by our highest policymakers that there was (an) imminent threat, dangers, national security was at stake, as well as regional security.
"And intelligence had been taken and now we find that nothing is available. No weapons of mass destruction, the biological, the chemical, nuclear perhaps least of all. I think we've all known that for a long time."
Rockefeller said there was now little hope of finding much more.
He said the failure to find evidence "raises real questions about something called the doctrine of pre-emption, the way we make decisions at the highest level."
He added: "You just don't make decisions like we do and put our nation's youth at risk based upon something that appears not to have existed."
- AFP
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