|
Home>News Center>World | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Former UN arms inspectors slam Bush, Blair after weapons report
Two former senior UN weapons inspectors in Iraq on Sunday criticized US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for clinging to ever-weaker arguments to justify their war on Iraq.
In separate comments in The Independent on Sunday, Hans Blix, the former UN chief arms inspector until the US-British invasion in March 2003, and Scott Ritter, a senior inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, backed a US official report concluding Iraq had no banned weapons before the war. The authors of that report, although Bush appointees, 鈥渉ave had to acknowledge that the reality on the ground was totally different from the virtual reality that had been spun鈥�, Blix wrote. Charles Duelfer, who headed the Iraq Survey Group, said in the 1,000-page report released Wednesday that Saddam had destroyed most of his chemical and biological weapons after his 1991 Gulf War defeat and that his nuclear program had 鈥減rogressively decayed鈥�. Duelfer said the Iraqi leader had however hoped to renew his weapons quest if sanctions were lifted鈥攁nd both Blair and Bush have rushed to use that to argue their pre-emptive strike was necessary. 鈥淭his is the new straw to which the governments concerned have begun to cling鈥�, Blix wrote. A former Swedish foreign minister who led the UN hunt for banned chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, Blix said that in fact 鈥渢he world succeeded in disarming Saddam (Hussein) without knowing it鈥�. He questioned whether, as the Duelfer report recommends, UN inspectors would be allowed to carry out their work 鈥渋n future cases, when supervision and verification will be needed, for example, in Iran, Libya and North Korea鈥�. Ritter, too, said Bush and Blair were 鈥渟crambling to re-justify鈥� the war now that the banned weapons argument no longer held water, with claims they have made the world safer. But Ritter charged that history would judge the leaders harshly for making the world a worse place by flouting international law and creating chaos in Iraq. He said 鈥渢he world鈥檚 two greatest democracies鈥� had undermined the legal framework of the United Nations set up after World War II at exactly the time when the world needed multilateralism most, to fight a global war on terror. 鈥淪addam is gone, and the world is far worse for it鈥攏ot because his regime posed no threat, perceived or otherwise, but because the threat to international peace and security resulting from the decisions made by Bush and Blair to invade Iraq in violation of international law make any threat emanating from an Iraq ruled by Saddam pale in comparison,鈥� he wrote. Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the US Marines, was an inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, when he resigned, citing a lack of UN and US support for his tough disarmament methods. Both men have been outspoken critics of Bush and Blair, and authors of books on the hunt for Saddam鈥檚 weapons of mass destruction. |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
