MONDAY, JULY 14, 2003
Blair made 'fundamental mistake' over WMD claim: Blix
PTI
LONDON: Former head of the UN weapons inspectors Hans Blix has said that British Premier Tony Blair made a 'fundamental mistake' in claiming that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.
The figure of 45 minutes to deploy weapons of mass destruction seemed "pretty far off the mark," Blix told daily 'The Independent on Sunday'. "I think that was a fundamental mistake. I don't know exactly how they calculated this figure of 45 minutes in the dossier of September last year. That seems pretty far off the mark to me," he said.
The claim was made in the Government's WMD dossier last September and repeated by the Prime Minister when he presented the document in the House of Commons. Blix said it was theoretically possible to switch in an instant from producing vaccines to producing biological weapons. "But a weapon is also about a means of delivery, and it seems to me highly unlikely that there were any means of delivering biological or chemical weapons within 45 minutes." He also said that the British government 'overinterpreted' the intelligence they had.
Saying that Blair was 'strongly convinced' about the existence of WMD, he maintained that "In fact, I was the one who was sceptical and critical, and said that I didn't think that the evidence was so strong, and said so to the Security Council." A British parliamentary committee last Monday found that the claim "did not warrant the prominence given to it".
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