http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=322JSO5RJR3M0CRBAEOCFEY?type=worldNews&storyID=4198857

Blair Sticks to Iraq WMD Stance Despite Kay
Fri January 23, 2004 09:02 PM ET

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday stuck by his stance weapons of mass destruction would eventually be found in Iraq, despite the top man hunting them saying they did not exist.

"It is important people are patient and we let the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) do its work," a spokesman for Blair said. "There is still more work to be done and we await the findings of that. But our position is unchanged."

However, Donald Anderson, a member of Blair's ruling Labour Party and chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, told BBC television: "It looks increasingly forlorn that there are any chances now of finding those stockpiles."

David Kay, stepping down on Friday as head of the U.S.-led ISG hunt for banned Iraqi weapons that replaced earlier U.N. inspections, said no arms would be found.

"I don't think they existed," said Kay. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War, and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the 90s."

Blair joined President Bush in ordering the war to oust Saddam Hussein on grounds Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to world peace.

Although no such weapons have been found since Saddam was toppled last April, Blair says he will be proved right.

"What they have found already is a whole raft of evidence about clandestine operations that should have been disclosed to the United Nations," he said in a recent interview.

"What was the point of having all these elaborate concealment mechanisms if there was nothing to conceal?"

Britain's minority opposition Liberal Democrats said Kay's remarks cast severe doubt on the government's reasoning for the Iraq war.

"This is yet another massive blow to the credibility of the British government's case that Iraq presented such a serious threat to the UK that only military action would do," said Menzies Campbell, the party's foreign affairs spokesman.

Next week Blair faces a revolt in his Labour Party on higher education fees as well as a possibly damaging judge's report into the suicide of a government expert on Iraqi arms.

David Kelly killed himself after being exposed as a source for a BBC report that Blair's team "sexed up" the threat Saddam posed.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

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