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We
would now know what we're being told, that Saddam did not have
those weapons... and we'd have found out without a war in which
thousands were killed,” Cook
|
LONDON,
July 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies ) - As Senior British
officials virtually ruled out the possibility of finding such weapons,
British Prime Minister maintained a defiant tone that "concrete
evidence" of the products of Saddam Hussein's weapons program
would be unearthed.
The
BBC - which in late May reported that a British
government dossier on Iraq in September was "sexed up" to
help justify military action - quoted unnamed senior government
officials Thursday, July 10, as saying they no longer believed weapons
of mass destruction will be unearthed in Iraq.
"Senior
government sources are telling me that they no longer believe that
physical weapons of mass destruction are actually going to be found in
Iraq," the BBC's respected political editor Andrew
Marr reported.
"They
don't think that there were no weapons program. They believe that
interviews with Iraqi scientists, perhaps documentation will be
uncovered which will reveal the extent of program that were then in
the past."
"But
when it comes to physical evidence I have to say that the belief that
that will be found and can be paraded in front of the cameras seems to
be trickling into the sand," Marr said on BBC
television.
‘Dramatic
Development’
Former
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the admissions were a "dramatic
development" and ex-Prime Minister John Major has called for a
full independent inquiry into the basis for invasion.
"This
is a dramatic development. Remember the government told us that Saddam
had real weapons, which made him a real and present danger - and
that's why we had to go to war there and then,” said Cook, who
resigned as leader of the Commons in the run-up to the invasion.
Cook
told the BBC that "Parliament voted for war because
it was told that Saddam did have real weapons of mass destruction,
adding that it would have been better to have given the U.N. weapons
inspectors more time to finish their job, rather than rushing to the
invasion.
"They
said we could not afford the time to let Hans Blix and the U.N.
weapons inspectors finish the job.
"We
now know that was wrong and we could have let them finish their task
and they would have told us what we have now discovered but we did not
need to have a war to find out."
"We
would now know what we're being told, that Saddam did not have those
weapons... and we'd have found out without a war in which thousands
were killed,” said Cook.
Defiant
Blair
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Blair
still believes "concrete evidence" of the products of
Saddam Hussein's weapons program will be found
|
On
his part, British Prime Minister Tony Blair still believes
"concrete evidence" of the products of Saddam Hussein's
weapons program will be found.
“He
is absolutely confident that we will find evidence not only of weapons
of mass destruction program but concrete evidence of the product of
those programs as well,” said the prime minister’s spokesman.
Blair's
spokesman would not be drawn on whether actual weapons would be found.
"This
is another BBC exclusive based on another anonymous
source,” he said.
Blair
told MPs earlier this week: "I have absolutely no doubt at all
that we will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction
programs."
Number
10 insisted Blair had not shifted his language to talk about programs,
rather than weapons themselves, said the BBC.
Earlier,
Downing Street said the prime minister stood by what he told a Commons
committee. Blair told MPs then: "I have absolutely no doubt at
all that we will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction
programs”.
But
the BBC quoted a government source who said that
government's September dossier on Iraq was "sexed up",
against the wishes of intelligence chiefs, by inserting the claim that
Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.
The
statement put the BBC at loggerheads with the British
government, as a number of officials called on the public broadcaster
to apologize for reporting it.
