London, July 10: A former member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet today said he doesn't believe coalition forces searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will find a major stock. Blair made the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's chemical or biological weapons the backbone of his case for war. He has come under increasing pressure as coalition troops have failed to find such arms, but the Prime Minister told a parliamentary committee earlier this week that he was confident that evidence of weapons programs will be found.
Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, however, Blair again suggested that actual weapons will be found. However, former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who quit the cabinet to protest Blair's Iraq policy, told a television channel. "The idea that there is some big arsenal of weapons that posed that real and present danger which we haven't found does not seem to me credible."
Cook said only evidence of Saddam Hussein's banned weapons - rather than evidence of weapons programs – would vindicate the government's decision to go to war. "Parliament voted for war because it was told that Saddam did have real weapons of mass destruction," he said. Bureau Report