Time for Bush to own up on weapons - inspector

Former US weapons inspector David Kay is advising President George Bush to acknowledge he was wrong about hidden storehouses of weapons in Iraq and move ahead with overhauling the intelligence process.

Kay said the “serious burden of evidence” suggests Saddam Hussein did not have caches of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons at the beginning of the Iraqi war, but was seriously engaged in developing missiles.

“You are better off if you acknowledge error and say we have learned from it and move ahead,” Kay said in Washington.

“I’m afraid if you don’t acknowledge error, and everybody knows why you are afraid to acknowledge error, your political opponents will seize on it, the press will seize on it, and no one will give you credit,” Kay said.

Since resigning last month, Kay has said repeatedly that US intelligence was wrong in claiming that Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and advanced nuclear weapons programmes.

UN and US searches have failed to find the weapons, and Bush has appointed a bipartisan commission to conduct an investigation. Democrats in the meantime are accusing the administration of misleading the American public.

Bush and other officials insist weapons could still be discovered.

Kay said satellites have shown a lot of traffic going from Iraq to Syria, but that US investigators could not figure out what was being transported and “Syria wouldn’t help”.

“My only serious regret about the continued holding on to these hopes that eventually we will find it (weapons) is it allows us to avoid the hard steps necessary to reform the process,” the former UN and International Atomic Energy Agency inspector said.

Despite the lack of weapons of mass destruction, Kay said, Iraq had an aggressive programme to develop missiles assisted by foreign technology and scientists.

Some of the scientists eventually left the country but they still helped Saddam by transmitting information to Iraq electronically, he said.

“We have absolute evidence and proof,” Kay said. But he declined to identify those who he said helped Iraq or their countries.