posted 01-23-2004 07:11 PM            

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Kay stepped down as leader of the U.S. hunt for banned weapons in Iraq (news - web sites) on Friday and said he did not believe the country had any large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.

In a direct challenge to the Bush administration, which says its invasion of Iraq was justified by the presence of illicit arms, Kay told Reuters in a telephone interview he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found.

"I don't think they existed," Kay said. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s," he said.

The CIA announced earlier that former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who has expressed his own doubts that unconventional weapons would be found, would succeed Kay as Washington's chief arms hunter.

Kay said he believes most of what was going to be uncovered in Iraq had been found and that the weapons hunt would become more difficult once America returned control of the country to the Iraqis.

The United States went to war against Baghdad last year citing a threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. So far, no banned arms have been found.

In his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush insisted that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had actively pursued dangerous weapons programs right up to the start of the U.S. attack in March.

"Had we failed to act," Bush said, "the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."

JURY STILL OUT

And on Wednesday, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States had not given up on finding unconventional weapons in Iraq. "The jury is still out," he said in a radio interview.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Friday, in response to Kay's remarks: "We remain confident that the Iraq Survey Group will uncover the truth about Saddam Hussein's regime, the regime's weapons of destruction programs."

Kay said he left his post due to a "complex set of issues," including a reduction in resources and a change in focus of the Defense Department's Iraq Survey Group which is conducting the weapons hunt.

ISG analysts were diverted from hunting for weapons of mass destruction to helping in the fight against the insurgency, he said. "When I had started out I had made it a condition that ISG be exclusively focused on WMD, that's no longer so."

"We're not going to find much after June. Once the Iraqis take complete control of the government it is just almost impossible to operate in the way that we operate," Kay said.

"I think we have found probably 85 percent of what we're going to find," he said. "I think the best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production and that's what we're really talking about."

Kay said he was going back to the private sector.

In a statement announcing Kay's departure, CIA Director George Tenet praised Kay for his "extraordinary service under dangerous and difficult circumstances."

Duelfer, 51, a former deputy executive chairman of the U.N. Special Commission that was responsible for dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, had previously expressed doubts that unconventional weapons would be found.

"I think that Mr. Kay and his team have looked very hard. I think the reason that they haven't found them is they're probably not there," Duelfer told NBC television earlier this month.

But after his new job was announced, Duelfer, who will be based in Iraq as CIA special adviser to direct the WMD search, said he was keeping an open mind and his past comments had been made without the benefit of seeing the most current U.S. intelligence reports.

posted 01-23-2004 10:33 PM            

Archbishop Desmond Tutu says Tony Blair and George Bush should admit the war in Iraq was wrong.

He said such a move would help persuade the people of Iraq the coalition is serious about the future of the country.

Archbishop Tutu, now visiting professor on post-conflict societies at Kings College London, has told the BBC: "I think the coalition would show considerable magnanimity if it was, in fact, to acknowledge that in the first place the assault on Iraq was wrong.

"If they were able to bring themselves to do that, it would go a very long way to making people say these people are, in fact, serious, they are not merely concerned about face-saving.

"The fact that the coalition has returned to the UN underscores precisely what people kept saying: that if the war was going to be legitimate, it needed to be declared by a legitimate authority, in this case the UN."

His comments come as a United Nations team is set to return to Iraq to examine ways to transfer power to an Iraqi government.

They would be the first UN staff in the country since a mass withdrawal in August following a bombing of UN offices in Baghdad which killed 23 people.

Edward Mortimer, adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said the UN wanted to help. But all sides had to understand the nature of the help on offer and be willing to accept it.

"We are not in control," he told the programme.

"In the end, Iraqis and the coalition need to agree on how to handle this. I think the fact they have to come to the UN shows they recognise they have got to reach agreement."

Story filed: 10:39 Wednesday 21st January 2004
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_857916.html?menu=news.latestheadlines

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washingtonpost.com
Top U.S. Politician: Iraq WMD May Have Gone to Syria

Reuters
Wednesday, January 21, 2004; 10:11 PM

By Joseph Logan

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts said there was some concern Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had gone to Syria, and Washington vowed to carry on searching for such arms in Iraq.

Roberts, a leading member of President Bush's Republican Party, said on Wednesday: "I think that there is some concern that shipments of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) went to Syria." He did not elaborate.

Syria, which borders Iraq, has in the past denied U.S. charges it has weapons of mass destruction programs and supports "terrorist activity."

Bush, seeking re-election in November with Iraq high on the campaign agenda, ordered U.S.-led forces to oust Saddam Hussein after accusing him of possessing chemical and biological arms and trying to build a nuclear weapon.

"The jury is still out," Vice President Dick Cheney said on the failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction since Saddam was toppled last April.

"It's going to take some additional considerable period of time to look at all of the cubby holes and...dumps and all the places in Iraq where you might expect to find something like that," Cheney told U.S. National Public Radio.

FENCE-MENDING TRIP

Cheney begins a five-day trip to Europe on Thursday designed to mend fences after bitter divisions in the international community over the Iraq war.

A senior Bush administration official said Cheney would join business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Saturday and seek other countries' help in rebuilding Iraq.

"They've got as much at stake in a successful outcome, for example in Iraq, or in dealing effectively with the war on terror or countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction as we do," the official said.

France, Germany and Russia were among states that openly opposed the Iraq war, while Britain, Spain and Italy were among those who backed Bush.

A political leader from Iraq's majority Shi'ite Muslim community said the top Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was likely to drop a demand for early direct elections if the United Nations concluded they would not be feasible.

The U.S.-led occupying authorities say it would be difficult to hold elections before the planned June handover of power to Iraqis due to guerrilla attacks and the lack of electoral registers and laws.

Shi'ites, repressed during Saddam's three decades of iron rule, have held mass demonstrations in support of Sistani's call for elections. Saddam had his power base with Sunni Muslims.

UNITED NATIONS WEIGHS INVOLVEMENT

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is considering sending a team to Iraq at the request of Washington and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to study whether it would be possible to hold a national election in the next few months.

"If there is a U.N. delegation that has a background in electoral and census matters, and has an open dialogue...one side may be convinced by what the other says," said Ibrahim al-Jaafari, head of Iraq's Shi'ite Dawa party.

"Whatever the result, if it comes to an agreement, I believe Sistani will accept that," said Jaafari, who is also a member of the Governing Council.

Washington had previously criticized the United Nations for failing to back the war to topple Saddam and long resisted any role for the organization in postwar Iraq.

The United States has proposed regional caucuses to select a transitional assembly by the end of May that would in turn pick an interim government to take back sovereignty at the end of June. Full elections would follow in 2005.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait told the United States they were ready to discuss a major reduction in Iraq's debt, but both wanted to see a sovereign Iraqi government in place before any deal could be reached.

U.S. envoy James Baker visited both countries as part of a mission to reduce Iraq's estimated $120 billion of foreign debt as Washington tries to rebuild a country battered by years of international isolation under Saddam but rich in oil reserves.

U.S. Congress sources and budget analysts said Bush may seek an additional $40 billion or more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year -- on top of the $400 billion military budget he will send to Congress next month.

But Bush was unlikely to send the request to Congress until after the November presidential election to minimize any political damage, the sources said. (Editing by Ralph Gowling)

© 2004 Reuters

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Krap!