Wolfowitz comments revive doubts over Iraq's mass destruction weapons/European critics/Источник: AP/01.06

http://www1.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_article.php?articleId=7769&lang=en

Wolfowitz comments revive doubts over Iraq's mass destruction weapons
01.06.2003 [10:32]

European critics of the Iraq war expressed shock Friday at published remarks by a senior U.S. official downplaying Iraq's mass destruction weapons as the reason for the conflict.

In an interview in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited "bureaucratic reasons" for focusing on Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal and said a "huge" reason for the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia.

"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.

He said one reason for going to war against Iraq that was "almost unnoticed but huge" was the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was in power.

Those troops were sent to Saudi Arabia to protect the desert kingdom against Saddam, but their presence in the country which houses Islam's holiest sites enraged Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden.

Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, the United States announced it was removing most of its 5,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and would set up its main regional command center in Qatar.

However, those goals were not spelled out publicly as the United States sought to build international support for the war. Instead, the Bush administration focused on Saddam's failure to comply with U.N. resolutions demanding he dismantle suspected chemical, biological and nuclearweapons.

However, the failure of U.S. forces to locate any such weapons has raised doubts in Europe and around the world about whether Iraq represented a global security threat.

Earlier this week, Wolfowitz's boss, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested that Saddam might have destroyed such weapons before the war began.

On Friday, the commander of U.S. Marines in Iraq said he was surprised that extensive searches have failed to discover any of the chemical weapons that U.S. intelligence had indicated were supplied to front line Iraqi forces at the outset of the war.

"Believe me, it's not for lack of trying," Lt. Gen. James Conway told reporters. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

The remarks by both Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz revived the controversy over the war as U.S. President George W. Bush left for a European tour in which he hopes to put aside the bitterness over the war that threatened the trans-Atlantic partnership.

In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting newspaper said the comments about Iraqi weapons showed that America is losing the battle for credibility.

"The charge of deception is inescapable," the newspaper said Friday.

In London, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons to protest the war, said he doubted Iraq had any such weapons.

"The war was sold on the basis of what was described as a pre-emptive strike, 'Hit Saddam before he hits us," Cook told British Broadcasting Corp. "It is now quite clear that Saddam did not have anything with which to hit us in the first place."

During a visit to Poland, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday he has "absolutely no doubt" that concrete evidence will be found of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

"Have a little patience," Blair told reporters.

Wolfowitz was in Singapore, where he is due to speak Saturday at the Asia Security Conference of military chiefs and defense ministers from Asian and key Western powers.

He told reporters at the conference that the United States will reorganize its forces worldwide to confront the threat of terrorism.

"We are in the process of taking a fundamental look at our military posture worldwide, including in the United States," Wolfowitz said. "We're facing a very different threat than any one we've faced historically."

Источник: AP