Sydney, May 29: There is clear evidence Iraq had a biological weapons programme even though none of the armaments have been found there since us-led forces invaded the country, Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer said today. Downer cited a US Central Intelligence Agency report released yesterday, which said two trucks had been discovered in northern Iraq filled with laboratory equipment, as proof that Iraq had such a programme. No prohibited weapons were found in the trucks, but US Intelligence officials say the vehicles fit a description from an Iraqi source of a mobile biological weapons laboratory. "The equipment has now been presented to the world and I think that's very revealing," downer told Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio today.

"Whether the agents that were to be used in those biological warfare vehicles will be found, that's another question, because it's obviously like looking for a needle in a haystack," he said. The United States led an invasion of Iraq, toppling Saddam Hussein's regime, based on claims that the oil-rich country had a programme to build Weapons of Mass Destruction. But US forces and their allies have been unable to find any such weapons after searching for more than a month.


US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that maybe no evidence of weapons of mass destruction had been found because Hussein's supporters had "decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict."


Bureau Report