US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday insisted there was no definitive proof that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
According to Rumsfeld, testimony by chief US weapons expert David Kay had not proven that Iraq had the banned weapons that the US administration had claimed before the war.
"But it also has not proven the opposite," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to AFP. Replying to whether US intelligence experts were pressured to make their findings fit the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq, Rumsfeld said "the answer is absolutely not."
Rumsfeld said it was too early to come to a final conclusion about what happened to Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
Of Kay's view that they did not exist at the start of the war, Rumsfeld said, "I suppose that's possible but not likely."
Rumsfeld highlighted theories that the weapons were moved to other states, that they were dispersed and hidden throughout Iraq, that they were destroyed before the US invasion, or that they had small stockpiles and a surge capability for a rapid buildup.
Rumsfeld said the size of Iraq would make it easy for things to be hidden, recalling that it took 10 months to find ousted president Saddam Hussein.
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
