Blair: WMD claim less certain
2004-07-14 17:25
London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday that evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction was "less certain, less well founded," than he had stated before the war.
"The evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was indeed less certain, less well-founded, than was stated at the time," he said.
Blair was addressing parliament an hour after an official inquiry condemned as unreliable much of the British intelligence on Iraqi weapons before the war to remove Saddam.
Iraq had no useable chemical or biological weapons before the war, and British intelligence to the contrary relied in part on "seriously flawed" or "unreliable" sources, the inquiry reported.
However, it absolved Prime Minister Tony Blair's government and the intelligence agencies of "deliberate distortion or culpable negligence."
Blair said he accepted the report's findings and accepted personal responsibility for any errors made.
In a statement to the House of Commons, Blair conceded that it was "increasingly clear" Saddam Hussein had no stockpiles of illicit weapons on the eve of the war. But he insisted the US led military campaign was not a mistake.
"I have to accept, as the months have passed, it seems increasingly clear that at the time of invasion Saddam did not have stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons ready to deploy," Blair said.
Government claim "misleading"
But, he insisted, "I cannot honestly say I believe getting rid of Saddam was a mistake at all. Iraq, the region, the wider world is a better and safer place without Saddam."
Butler's report, echoing the damning findings of last week's US Senate report, said that Iraq "did not have significant, if any, stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a state fit for deployment or developed plans for using them."
The report said the government's claim in a September 2002 dossier that Saddam could use chemical and biological weapons on 45 minutes notice was potentially misleading because it did not explain that it referred to battlefield weapons.
However, the report backed the government's claim that it had intelligence that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, and that the claim was not based on forged documents.
"No one lied, no one made up the intelligence, no one inserted things into dossier against the advice of intelligence services," Blair said.
"Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficulty. That issue of good faith should now be at an end."
The report said the September 2002 dossier prepared by Blair's government on the Iraqi threat pushed its case to the limits of available intelligence.
"Language in the dossier may have left with readers the impression that there was fuller and firmer intelligence behind the judgments than was the case," the report said.
- AP