Powell admits Iraq may not have had WMD

By Salamander Davoudi in Washington, James Blitz and Mark Huband in London and FT staff
Published: January 25 2004 12:52 | Last Updated: January 25 2004 12:54

Colin Powell, US secretary of state, admitted at the weekend that it was an open question whether Iraq ever had any weapons of mass destruction after David Kay, the top US weapons inspector, resigned.

"The open question is how many stocks they had, if any, and if they had any, where did they go. And if they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand," the secretary of state said as he travelled to Georgia to attend the inauguration of Mikhail Saakashvili as president.

When Mr Kay stepped down on Friday he said he did not believe there were any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq.

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The remarks were a direct challenge to President George W. Bush, who insisted in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday that Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, had pursued dangerous weapons programmes right up to the March invasion

Mr Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, which is in charge of the weapons hunt, said he had concluded there were no Iraqi stockpiles to be found. "I don't think they existed. What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War [in 1991] and I don't think there was a large-scale production programme in the nineties," he said in an interview with Reuters.

Mr Kay's comments are a setback for Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, who already faces crucial tests next week, including an inquiry verdict into the death of David Kelly, the former UK weapons expert. Mr Blair's office last night tried to put a brave face on Mr Kay's decision to quit. "It's important people are patient," said a spokesman for Mr Blair. "We must let the Iraq Survey Group go on doing its work."

Mr Kay had led the hunt for weapons since the fall of Mr Hussein's regime but his inspections group has been hindered in its search for clear evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons - one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the invasion.

Mr Kay said he was leaving his post and returning to the private sector due to a "complex set of issues" relating in part to a reduction in the resources and a change in the focus of the Iraq Survey Group. He expressed frustration that in Iraq his team was diverted from hunting for weapons and towards helping in the fight against insurgency.

Security officials in London and Washington were last night examining the implications of Mr Kay's statement but were insistent that the Iraq Survey Group's hunt for weapons would go on.

Both the CIA and MI6, the US and UK intelligence organisations, had regarded Mr Kay's interim report on the weapons hunt as boosting arguments that their intelligence had been correct. Mr Kay's latest assertion that there had been no large stockpiles damages their case.

Mr Kay will be replaced by Charles Duelfer, a former weapons inspector who has also expressed doubts about finding unconventional weapons in Iraq. Mr Duelfer served as the deputy executive chairman of the UN Special Commission on Iraq between 1997-2000, making him the number two weapons inspector there at the time.

"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," Mr Duelfer told NBC television earlier this month. However, both agencies were adamant his claim was premature and did not weaken the case for continuing the search.

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