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UK government denies intentionally lying over Iraq arms

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, July 13, IRNA -- The British government has denied that it 
intentionally lied over Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction to justify 
last year`s war to overthrow Saddam Hussein`s regime. 
"I did not believe that we were being deliberately misled, and I 
would never have deliberately misled this House about what we 
believed was the case on weapons of mass destruction," Foreign 
Office Minister Baroness Symons told parliament on Monday. 
During a brief debate on Iraq`s weapons of mass destruction in 
the House of Lords, she said that she also did "not believe that my 
right honourable friend the Prime Minister is in any different 
position." 
The Foreign Office minister was being challenged by peers over 
last week`s admission by Tony Blair that Iraq`s alleged weapons may 
never be found. 
"It is very easy with hindsight to say a whole range of things. 
What matters is what was believed at the time," she argued. 
She reiterated that Britain did not join the US in military 
conflict against Iraq solely on the basis of weapons but on UN 
resolutions. 
Symons suggested that "only Saddam may be able to answer" what 
happened to the alleged weapons and that such issues may be "exposed 
during the course of his trial" in Iraq. 
Blair`s admission for the first time that weapons of mass 
destruction may never be found in Iraq came ahead of last week`s 
damning report from the US Senate about the failure of the 
intelligence services. 
The UK is also publishing its own report, led by former cabinet 
secretary Lord Butler, on the use of intelligence in the lead-up to 
the Iraq war, but like the initial US report, it does not cover the 
role of politicians. 
HC/2321/1432