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Iraq haunts Blair again after US doubts 'massive evidence' claim
Jordan Times, Monday, December 29, 2003
LONDON (AFP) — British Prime Minister Tony Blair came under renewed pressure over Iraq on Sunday, 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 Sunday, 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.
On Sunday, 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.
"Now is the time for Tony Blair to draw up dividing lines and define himself and New Labour against the political right," he said.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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