US President George W. Bush, in St. Petersburg Sunday, stood by his assertion that Iraq possessed "weapons of mass destruction."
Both Washington and Moscow are "determined to meet the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction," Bush said during a joint news conference with Russian counterpart Putin.
In reply to a question about the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the US leader charged that Iraq had such weapons, and used the allegation as his prime justification for launching a war there.
"We've discovered a weapons system, biological labs, that Iraq denied she had, and labs that were prohibited under the UN resolutions," Bush said.
Earlier this weekend, Bush pointed to two suspected biological laboratories found in Iraq. However, both the Pentagon and US weapons hunters have said the labs do not constitute arms. US intelligence concluded last week that the mobile labs probably were designed to produce biological weapons.
Putin, for his part, offered no opinion on whether such weapons would be found in Iraq.
The "fundamentals between the United States and Russia turned out to be stronger than the forces and events that tested it," Putin said.
Russia has a long history of involvement with Iraq's oil sector, and Putin made clear Moscow would prefer to carve out a role for its companies in Iraq's future. He offered "all our expertise, experience and resources" to that end.
Bush acknowledged Russia's experience and history, however stressed that "the Iraqi people will make the decision which is in their best interest" regarding Iraq's oil industry.
Washington late last week announced a major expansion of thus-far fruitless efforts to find chemical and biological arms in Iraq, establishing a team of 1,400 US, British and Australian experts to take up the hunt. The move came amidst international cynicism regarding the motives for the war against Iraq as no banned weapons have yet been found.
According to Reuters, the American move was announced just hours after Lt. Gen. James Conway, the top US Marine officer in Iraq, said US intelligence was "simply wrong" in leading the military to believe that the invading troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons.
The Times Saturday reported that a group of former US intelligence officials had written to President Bush claiming that the US Congress and the American public were misled about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war. The group’s members, most of them former CIA analysts, claimed that they have close contacts with senior officials working inside the US intelligence agencies, who have told them that intelligence was “cooked” to persuade Congress to authorize the war.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair Sunday told Sky News he has "no doubt at all" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that evidence to prove it will be found.
The British leader said the evidence would be accumulated over the coming months and would then be made public. Blair added people should "just wait and have a little patience".
Blair said: "There is no doubt at all that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and has used weapons of mass destruction. There's a reason why we had 12 years of UN resolutions. "Our priority at the moment in Iraq is the reconstruction of Iraq."
He conveyed teams were interviewing "the scientists and experts who worked on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programme, the chemical, biological, the nuclear weapons program".
It should be noted that Blair's former Cabinet member Clare Short has meanwhile claimed he "duped" the British public over the threat posed by Saddam in order to ensure Britain went to war.
Short, who quit as International Development secretary last month, accused the Blair of using "political spin" to create a sense of urgency about the need to deal with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
