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Search for banned weapons in Iraq has ended
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-12 14:24
The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ended last month, nearly
two years after US President Bush sent troops to disarm Saddam Hussein, The
Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
Officials who served with the group charged with hunting banned weapons said
the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold
up the effort shortly before Christmas, the newspaper reported.
Charles Duelfer, the CIA special adviser who led the hunt, has returned home,
and analysts serving in his Iraq Survey Group (ISG) have returned to CIA
headquarters in Virginia, the report said, citing unnamed intelligence
officials.
The Post said the findings of an interim report that Duelfer submitted to
Congress in September will stand as the ISG's final conclusions, according to a
senior intelligence official.
The report concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles of biological and chemical
weapons and its nuclear program had decayed before last year's U.S.-led
invasion, in findings contrary to prewar assertions of the Bush administration.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, another U.S. intelligence official
confirmed that Duelfer was back in Washington, but disputed that the weapons
hunt was over.
"This isn't the kind of thing that stops, the search continues," the official
told Reuters. "If new information comes in, obviously that would be looked at."
The Washington Post reported that the White House had been reluctant to call
off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons had been shipped out of
Iraq before the war or well hidden inside the country.
Bush, who subsequently said that he was "right to take action" in Iraq, had
cited a growing threat from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction as one of the
main reasons for overthrowing the Iraqi president.
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