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Blair: WMD may never be found
11/01/2004 15:46 - (SA)
London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested on Sunday that Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction may never be found in Iraq.
"In a land mass twice the size of the UK it may well not be surprising you don't find where this stuff is hidden", Blair told BBC television.
The prime minister, US President George W Bush's staunchest ally in the war against Saddam, added: "You can't be definitive at the moment about what has happened."
Asked if he had been wrong in highlighting the threat of weapons of mass destruction, whose pursuit by Saddam was cited as a main justification for the war launched in March, Blair replied: "You can't say that at this point in time.
"What you can say is that we received that intelligence about Saddam's programmes and about his weapons, that we acted on that.
"But I don't know is the answer."
Blair again insisted the US-led Iraq Survey Group scouring Iraq had already uncovered evidence of secret weapons programmes.
Paul Bremer, the US official charged with running Iraq, last month rejected Blair's claim that the group had unearthed "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories".
However, Blair said on Sunday: "What they have found already is a whole raft of evidence about clandestine operations that should have been disclosed to the United Nations, a network.
"You are entitled to ask,'What was the point of having all these elaborate concealment mechanisms if there was nothing to conceal?'"
- AFP
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