Blair wants weapon search to continue

By ANDREW GRICE in London

The capture of Saddam Hussein could finally lead to the discovery of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday.

Asked if if Saddam might reveal details of his weapons programme, the Prime Minister replied: "There's obviously that possibility there, but I think in any event we have got to carry on doing the work we are doing.

"The Iraq Survey Group has already found evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, workings by scientists, plans to develop long-range ballistic missiles."

Blair was not referring to a new discovery but the 1200-strong group's interim report in October, which said it had found activities related to weapons of mass destruction, but no stocks of chemical or biological weapons.

In pre-Christmas interviews for British Forces Broadcasting Service and the BBC World Service's Arabic network, Blair said: "I'm confident that when the Iraq Survey Group has done its work we will find what's happened to those weapons because that he had them ... there is no doubt.

"I think it will take us time, but I just say to people that when a country with a ruler like Saddam tries to hide what it is doing, in a large country like Iraq it is relatively easy to hide it.

"But we have got to carry on until we find it."

Former chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday it was becoming "increasingly clear" that Saddam did not have any illegal weapons of mass destruction.

"My guess is that there are no weapons of mass destruction left," said Blix, who headed the team of UN inspectors that searched Iraq for more than three months before the war.

"I think many of the things that were said [about Iraq having them] were not sufficiently well based."

Blix said he thought most of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were destroyed in 1991.

But Blair said: "I don't think it's surprising that we will have to look for them. That he had them is beyond doubt. He used them against Iran, he used them against his own people," he said.

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Herald Feature: Iraq