Posted on 05/14/2003 4:39:49 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Tony Blair yesterday used the uncovering of a mass grave near Baghdad to justify the war against Iraq amid growing concern at Westminster over the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction.
In a significant change of tack, he said the Government was redoubling its efforts to preserve evidence of the brutal crimes of Saddam Hussein's regime such as the discovery of the grave containing as many as 15,000 bodies.
Mr Blair said he hoped that the reports would persuade people who doubted the wisdom of removing Saddam, "just how brutal, tyrannical and appalling that regime was and what a blessing it is for the Iraqi people and for humankind that he has gone from power".
The Government has been embarrassed by the growing scepticism over whether the weapons existed.
Almost five weeks after the ending of the military conflict, British and American troops have yet to find definite proof that the Iraqi regime had deadly weapons.
Mr Blair's justification for the war with Iraq was to disarm Saddam's regime of chemical and biological weapons, which he said could be activated at 45 minutes' notice.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, yesterday played down the importance of finding Saddam's alleged stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
He underlined difficulties faced by the coalition forces in finding hard proof of the weapons, claiming that Saddam had plenty of notice to destroy the material used to make the weapons. Mr Straw, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today, insisted that the weapons had existed and said the war was "self-evidently justified".
Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, challenged Mr Blair over reports that America was reluctant to allow United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction.
Despite earlier Government assurances that the UN would have a "vital role", America's ambassador to the UN had said it would have "no role for the foreseeable future", he said.
Yesterday Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, told the Commons defence committee that there was "a range of detailed evidence demonstrating that Iraq was engaged in a determined way in the development of weapons of mass destruction".
Mr Hoon said: "We have found, for example, a large amount of protective clothing available to Iraqi forces, the only purpose of which would be to protect them from their own biological and chemical weapons. The coalition does not possess such weapons."
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