Bush promises to ‘reveal the truth’ about Iraqi WMD
President George Bush has promised to ‘reveal the truth’ about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
The US President insisted that evidence of Saddam Hussein’s banned weapons programme would be found.
As the controversy over the coalition failure so far to produce proof of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities continues, Mr Bush addressed US troops in the Gulf Emirate of Qatar, stating: ‘One thing is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime because the Iraqi regime is no more.’
Both the British parliament and the US Congress are to investigate possible abuse of intelligence information in the run-up to the war in Iraq following accusations from both countries’ intelligence services that evidence was ‘manipulated’ to provide a stronger case for war.
Meanwhile, a team of seven United Nations weapons inspectors have arrived in Kuwait.
The team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be visiting Iraq to conduct limited investigations into reports of looting at the main Iraqi nuclear facility.
However, the United States has denied the IAEA inspectors the opportunity to measure environmental contamination or look into reports of radiation sickness and has banned them from entering the main complex at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre or six other nuclear sites. They will spend around two weeks in Iraq.
The inspectors are confined to assessing how much nuclear material was taken from the storage site near Tuwaitha in the chaos following the end of the war on Iraq.
The US has been against the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq. UN Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and his team fled Iraq days before the US-led invasion on March 20th.
The IAEA inspectors were permitted to return after the UN warned that a humanitarian and environmental crisis was brewing at Tuwaitha, after looters sold barrels, once filled with processed uranium, to local residents for food storage.
Dr Blix is due to return to the UN Council to discuss his analysis of evidence collected by UN inspectors before they left Iraq.
