Iraq's weapon risk 'misrepresented'

Bush Administration officials "systematically" misrepresented the danger of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes, which were not an immediate threat to the United States and the Middle East, a report from a US think tank said yesterday.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in its study, that there was "no convincing evidence" that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear programme.

It said United Nations weapons inspectors had discovered that nerve agents in Iraq's chemical weapons programme had lost most of their lethal capability as early as 1991.