War crime threat to Blair/under international law/The mother of a North soldier who died in the Gulf/icnetwork.co.uk/Jun 1

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War crime threat to Blair
Jun 1 2003

Exclusive By Phil Doherty, Sunday Sun
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The mother of a North soldier who died in the Gulf has said that Tony Blair should be prosecuted as a war criminal if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq.

Ann Nichol lost her Royal Marine son John Cecil, 36, in the Iraq war when the Sea Knight helicopter he was travelling in crashed in Kuwait in the first days of the conflict.

Now she has reacted angrily to the admission by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that weapons of mass destruction - WMD - may never be found in Iraq. Before the war Mr Blair and President Bush justified the toppling of Saddam by claiming he had biological and chemical weapons.

Ann said: "If this turns out to be a lie then Tony Blair should resign. He should also be prosecuted under international law as a war criminal.

"If they don't find any weapons of mass destruction then this war has been based on a pack of lies and they have put all of our sons and daughters lives on the line for a lie."

With no physical evidence of WMDs found in Iraq so far, pressure is mounting on Mr Blair.

Two trucks fitted with laboratory equipment have been found, but experts found no trace of chemical or biological weapons in them.

And captured Iraqi scientists who worked on the WMD programme insist that all such weapons were destroyed in the 1990s.

Mr Blair was left red-faced during an official visit to the former war zone last week when Mr Rumsfeld suggested that the Iraqis might have destroyed their nuclear and chemical weapons before the start of the war.

Then US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sparked further outrage by stating that "bureaucratic reasons" were behind the decision to make WMD the main justification for going to war.

The Prime Minister last night said he still believed that weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq.

But Ann, 58, of Gateshead, said: "We didn't fight this war for just reasons as there wasn't any threat to the UK from Saddam Hussein.

"Its important that they find these weapons for all those families that have lost someone.

"However, I don't think that they will ever find them."

Her son John, who was born in and brought up in Sandyford, Newcastle, was a colour sergeant in the Royal Marines.

He served in the first Gulf War and had been in uniform since his was 17.

He was among a group of eight Marines who were killed in the helicopter crash.

John was separated from his wife Wendy, the mother of his daughter Paige.

He also had two stepchildren, Nicky and Jodie, from his marriage.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The Prime Minister has no doubt that weapons of mass destruction will be found. But we know it will take time to find them.

"The information in the dossier about weapons of mass destruction was drawn from the Joint Intelligence Committee and accepted by them.

"There are 12 years of UN resolutions about these weapons so we know that they were there."

And Welsh Secretary Peter Hain insisted yesterday that the evidence of Saddam's WMD seen by Cabinet ministers was "absolutely convincing and conclusive".

New Iraq team to step up search for WMDs

A new team of 1400 experts is to start searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq amid claims that the coalition exaggerated the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the world.

The Iraq Survey Group will be led by Major General Keith Dayton of the US Defence Intelligence Agency. He said its arrival would will bring about a "significant expansion" of the hunt for biological and chemical weapons.

The investigators, from Britain, the US and Australia, will shift the focus of the search away from areas identified as suspicious before the war.

Instead it will look in places where new documents and interviews with Iraqis suggest that weapons of mass destruction could be hidden.

The new policy has been brought in amid growing unease about the failure to find illegal weapons in Iraq.

Before the war, the Bush administration cited the threat from weapons of mass destruction as the main reason for toppling Saddam's regime.

General Dayton said he was reasonably confident that his team would find evidence of an illegal weapons programme.

"This is not necessarily going to be quick and easy, but it's going to be very thorough," he said. "There is a lot of information out there that hasn't been gathered yet."

The Iraq Survey Group will include 200 to 300 searchers who will travel around Iraq and hundreds of experts to interrogate Iraqis.

Another 250 people will analyse documents and computer files at a regional base in Qatar while analysts put the pieces together and figure out what they mean.

The group, including military and civilian experts, will begin taking over the weapons hunt no later than June 7, with a two-week transition period.