http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=United+Kingdom+%26+Europe&month=December2003&file=World_News2003122921715.xml
Iraqi WMD claims haunt Blair again
Web posted at: 12/29/2003 2:17:15
Source ::: AFP
LONDON: British Prime Minister Tony Blair came under renewed pressure over
Iraq yesterday, after the US civil administrator in Baghdad contradicted his
claim that "massive evidence" of Saddam Hussein's quest for weapons of mass
destruction has been unearthed.
In an interview for ITV television, aired yesterday, Paul Bremer was asked
if it was correct to say that "massive evidence of a huge system of
clandestine laboratories" had come to light since the US and British
invasion of Iraq nine months ago.
"I don't know where those words come from but that is not what David Kay has
said," replied Bremer, referring to the chief of the Iraq Survey Group that
is hunting for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
"I have read (Kay's) reports so I don't know who said that," Bremer said.
"It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me," he added. "It sounds like
someone who doesn't agree with the policy sets up a red herring then knocks
it down."
Bremer backtracked, however, when he was told that it was Blair - US
President George W Bush's staunchest ally on Iraq - who had talked about
"massive evidence" in a pre-Christmas broadcast to British troops abroad.
Changing tack, the US official said the Iraq Survey Group had found "clear
evidence of biological and chemical programmes, ongoing."
"Weapons of mass destruction or no weapons of mass destruction, it's
important to step back a little bit here, to see what we have done
historically," he added.
There was no immediate reaction from Blair, who was on holiday in Egypt with
his family.
But a Downing Street spokeswoman reiterated that his "massive evidence"
claim had come from the Iraq Survey Group itself.
"He was referring to already published material in the interim report by the
Iraq Survey Group," she said.
Nevertheless, the Bremer interview seemed only to add to the unending
controversy over the way Blair led a sceptical Britain into the war
alongside the United States without an explicit UN mandate.
Blair pitched the need for military action strongly on the global threat
posed by Saddam's pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in
defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.
But with no actual weapons turning up, and lingering allegations that
Downing Street "sexed up" the case for war, Blair's position has looked
increasingly vulnerable.
Yesterday, his former international development secretary, Clare Short, who
quit Blair's government in protest over the war, predicted that Blair would
resign in the next few months.
The straw on the back of his career as prime minister, she said, would be
the findings of Lord Brian Hutton's inquiry into the suicide last July of
David Kelly, the Ministry of Defence weapons expert who was the source of a
BBC radio report in May alleging that intelligence on Iraq had been "sexed
up".
"There are going to be a lot of blows and difficulties and then we'll see
and he's not looking good," said Short on Sky News television.
"I think that for the honour of the country, as well as the renewal of the
Labour government, I very much hope he steps down gracefully."
Writing in the Independent on Sunday newspaper, former transport secretary
Stephen Byers urged the prime minister to "move beyond defensiveness" and
reunite the Labour Party before the next British election, which many
political analysts think will come in the first half of 2005.
.
|
