London, Oct 09: The top US diplomat for arms control said that it was too soon to rule out finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and suggested that Saddam Hussein's removal was justified even if no actual weapons were uncovered. "The evidence that we had... Was that Saddam had failed to account for substantial elements of a biological and chemical weapons programme that we suspected were in weaponised form," John Bolton, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, told the BBC.
"Whether they were in weaponised form or not is really not the issue. The issue is that the regime that had a pattern of trying to get and use these weapons... Has now been eliminated," he said. Bolton added, “The argument that was made by some people who were opposed to the war was that we had to demonstrate an imminent threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction. And that was not the basis on which we made the argument."
Interviewed by BBC Television during a visit to London, Bolton said, "It's too soon to say that we are not going to find the weapons. "Even the interim report by David Kay shows the capacity to recreate those weapons at fairly short notice," he stated.
Kay, the head of the US team of 1,200 experts scouring Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, reported to the US Congress last week that he found none of the nuclear, biological or chemical weapons that President George W Bush said Saddam had and were an imminent danger to the world. Bureau Report