"We have not found at this point actual weapons," Kay

BAGHDAD, October 3 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The U.S. team scouring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) report that concluded they are not yet found came as no surprise for former U.N. weapons inspectors' chief as the controversy surrounding the U.S. and British case for going to war in the first place deepened.

The head of the U.S. team of 1,200 experts searching Iraq for WMD concluded that no such weapons have been found.

"We have not found at this point actual weapons," David Kay told reporters Thursday, October 2, after giving closed door briefings to the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees on the work of the Iraq Survey Group, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Neither was his team able to confirm pre-war intelligence stating that Iraqi military units were prepared to use chemical warfare agents against U.S. forces.

In the report to the committees that was released in declassified form, Kay's team found that Iraq had little or no capacity to produce chemical warfare agents before the invasion because of damage inflicted by U.S. air strikes and years of sanctions.

Meanwhile, one of the staunch supporters of war, Australian Prime Minister John Howard now faces a parliamentary censure motion next week after political opponents said Friday, October 3, that the U.S. failure to find WMDs in Iraq showed he misled the public over the need for war.

However, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted Weapons of mass destruction could yet be found in Iraq, as the findings of the Iraq Survey Group drew a mixed reaction in Britain.

"No Surprises"

Howard ignored mounting opposition at home and followed Bush to war

For his part, Hans Blix - the head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq before the invasion - said that CIA official David Kay's report contained "no surprises", according to the BBC online news service Friday.

Blix told the BBC that America still had not come up with any evidence that Iraq had posed a great enough threat to justify war.

"I don't think there are any surprises. The most important point is that they confirm that they have not found any stocks of weapons of mass destruction of any kind," he said.

"They found minor proscribed items and debris - and so did we - and I think they confirmed also that there were research and development activities that were proscribed, which should have been declared."

"There is one point that [David Kay] makes - that if the armed attack had not occurred in the spring, then these things could have proceeded and developed into something bigger.

"I think one should have some caution there, because the Security Council had never intended to abandon the long-term monitoring, so the Iraqis would not have been left alone to proceed with whatever they had started."

Commenting on the report, vice-president of the Senate Intelligence Committee - Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat - said America's armed forces had been put at risk, based on a threat that appeared not to have existed, reported the BBC.

"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".

The U.S. Government has made no official reaction to the report.

However, a senior White House official who declined to be named told AFP: "Keep in mind it is a progress report, not a final reckoning of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs."

In his report, Kay insisted the findings did not mean the United States had concluded there were no weapons. "My advice to everyone is, still don't be surprised by surprises in Iraq," he said.

It would take between six and nine more months to give a firm indication of the state of the Iraqi weapons program, he said.

The search had already cost 300 million dollars and the U.S. administration plans to ask for 600 million dollars more, the New York Times reported.

Howard Faces Censure

In Australia, Howard insisted he had no regrets over involving Australia in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, despite the U.S. report.

The conservative Prime Minister braved strong domestic opposition to order troops into the March invasion of Iraq, justifying the decision as needed to counter illegal weapons programs allegedly run by the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Greens senator Bob Brown said Howard had committed Australia to war on a false pretext and he would move the censure motion on Tuesday, October 7.

"There has never been, in my lifetime, a more serious deceit in the Western democracies, including our own, by our leaders, than the argument that was put for the invasion of Iraq," Brown said.

The government does not have majority control of the Senate, meaning the motion could go through with the support of the main opposition Labor Party, providing a galling, if largely symbolic, slap in the face for Howard.

Howard stressed the interim nature of the report from Kay, which said there was "substantial evidence" Iraq planned to make chemical and biological arms even if none had been found yet.

"It certainly has already demonstrated a great deal of concealment by the former regime and a clear intention to develop weapons programs," Howard said of the Kay report during a visit to Brisbane.

"I think you have to suspend final judgment until the report has been completed," he said.

Questioned by a radio talk-show host about whether the failure to actually find illegal weapons in Iraq undermined his rationale for joining the war, Howard stood firm.

"You make judgments on the basis of the information available at the time you are required to make those judgments and the judgment was valid, the judgment was justified and it's a judgment I totally stand by and do not retreat from one iota," he said.

The Prime Minister insisted Australia had "unambiguous" intelligence assessments before the war that Saddam's regime had a weapons of mass destruction capability.

Labor's foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd described the Kay report as a "torpedo" to Howard's credibility but refused to say whether his party would support the censure motion.

"How long will it take for John Howard to front the Australian parliament and people and admit that he misled them entirely on the reasons for taking Australia to war with Iraq?" he said.

"Could Still Be Found"

In London, Straw, speaking on BBC radio, claimed the Kay report actually backed up the U.S. and British decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.

"The fact that they've not found weapons ... does not mean that they are not there," he said, adding that "a great deal already has been found in terms of programs" to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Questioned later on Sky News television on whether he still felt Saddam's regime was a clear threat to global security, Straw replied: "There's nothing in this report that undermines that."

Straw, on the BBC, also defended the Anglo-American decision to go to war without a final U.N. resolution or extended U.N. inspections inside Iraq, as demanded by France, Germany and Russia.

"If we had not taken military action at the time that we did, based on that defiance (by Saddam of U.N. resolutions), then what would have happened is that the resolve of the international community would have died down," he said.

"And then the (U.N.) inspectors would have found it more and more difficult to do their work as they had done before," he said.

"Then they would have been kicked out. Then we would have had a Saddam Hussein still there, re-empowered and re-emboldened."

But in spite of Straw's impassioned defense of the invasion decision, the report was seized upon by opponents of Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was U.S. President George W. Bush's staunchest ally in the showdown with Saddam.

Andrew Murray, chairman of the Stop The War Coalition, which organized huge demonstrations in London against the war, said the report confirmed that the reasons given for going to war were false.

"The prime minister now owes the nation an apology," he said.

Bernard Jenkin, the opposition Conservatives' spokesman on defense issues, said the interim report showed "clear evidence of Saddam Hussein's ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction" and his failure to comply with U.N. demands.

The Conservatives had supported Blair on the need for military action.

But Jenkins added that the interim report did not eliminate the need for "an independent judicial inquiry" into whether Blair's government had exaggerated the threat of Iraqi weapons in the run-up to war.

Robin Cook, who quit Blair's cabinet in protest at the war, said: "Quite honestly I think it would be better now if both London and Washington were to admit there were no weapons, we are not going to find any weapons."

It would be better, the ex-foreign secretary told Channel Four television, to take the millions of dollars being spent on the Iraq Survey Group and redirect the funds to the country's post-war reconstruction.