~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(click the flags)
Posted on 02/05/2004 11:58:04 AM PST by areafiftyone
MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spain, an outspoken U.S. ally on Iraq, has no immediate plans to investigate why the government believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, a government official said Thursday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was responding to a report Thursday in El Pais that Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's government had drafted a three-page internal document ruling out a probe into the government's grounds for supporting the U.S.-led war.
In the document, the government justifies its support for invading based on reports by United Nations' weapons inspectors, U.N. resolutions and Spain's national interest, El Pais said.
Aznar's office Thursday declined to confirm or deny the existence of the document. The official told The Associated Press only that Spain has "no plans for now" to launch an investigation.
El Pais said the document argues that because Spain based its decision on U.N. suspicions of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - not its own intelligence or any other country's - it was not Spain's responsibility to probe why weapons have not been found.
"The government never used as an argument any statement from any report of any secret service," El Pais quoted the document as stating.
With general elections scheduled for March 14, Aznar's party wrote the document as a guideline for its candidates, fearing the Iraq issue might hurt the party, El Pais said. Aznar is not running for re-election.
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair this week authorized investigations into military intelligence that claimed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or programs to build them. Their main argument for the war was that such weapons posed a threat to other countries.
An exhaustive, post-conflict search has turned up no such weapons, and David Kay, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said he doubted they exist.
In his speech Wednesday, Aznar did not refer directly to growing doubts that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, but said "we cannot stand by and do nothing" if there was a risk that such weapons exist and could be used by terrorists.
Socialist and other opposition parties that opposed the invasion keep demanding that Aznar explain the government's reasons for supporting the invasion considering the subsequent failure to find dangerous weapons.
Spain did not send combat troops to the war but has sent 1,300 peacekeepers. Eleven Spaniards in the U.S.-led coalition have died in Iraq since August, including seven intelligence agents killed in an ambush in late November.
Australia Doesn't Plan Weapons Inquiry
SYDNEY, Australia - Australia has no need for a special inquiry into its intelligence on Iraq (news - web sites) because it is sure Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had illicit weapons, Defense Minister Robert Hill said Tuesday.
Australia received its intelligence from Britain and the United States, whose leaders both plan to name special panels to investigate the intelligence they used for going to war in Iraq.
But Hill said he had confidence in the intelligence Australia received and there was no doubt Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
"There were weapons. That is not in dispute," Hill told reporters in Sydney. "The issue is what happened to those weapons."
Australia contributed 2,000 troops to the Iraq war tha toppled Saddam and stood by the U.S. administration's assertions the war was justified.
President Bush (news - web sites) decided on the investigation after David Kay resigned as the head of the U.S. mission to find banned weapons in Iraq, saying he thought Saddam likely had no such arms.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) will also appoint a commission to investigate faulty intelligence, Blair's spokesman said Monday.
Hill said Australia had already conducted a parliamentary inquiry to which Australian intelligence agencies had given evidence, and it was "difficult to see what benefit would flow from yet another Australian inquiry." The earlier inquiry has not completed its report and will not present its findings until March.
In a speech to Parliament before fighting broke out in Iraq, Prime Minister John Howard justified the war by saying intelligence sources showed Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction and could give them to terrorists. Opposition lawmakers then used their control of the parliament's upper house, the Senate, to start an inquiry into Howard's claims.
Some opposition lawmakers have raised the possibility of another inquiry depending on the outcome of the U.S. probe.
On Monday, Howard said Australia's intelligence on Iraq came largely from the United States and Britain.
"It didn't come from our own independent sources, obviously it was independently assessed and so forth, but it was primarily British and American intelligence," Howard said.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.