Iraq inspectors: We found no WMDs

In his interim report to the US House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Dr Kay said: “We have not yet found stocks of weapons but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitely either that such weapons stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone.

“We are actively engaged in searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis.”

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the report was “further conclusive and incontrovertible evidence” that the Iraqi regime had breached United Nations resolutions.

It showed that the military action taken by the United States and the UK was “justified and essential”, he said.

But Andrew Murray, chairman of the Stop The War Coalition, said the report confirmed that the reasons given for going to war were false.

“The Prime Minister now owes the nation an apology. His refusal to do so at this week’s Labour party conference and his invitation to President Bush to visit Britain next month will ensure continuing protests from the millions of people who opposed the war all along,” he said.

Dr Kay’s Iraq Survey Group has been scouring Iraq for the past three months for the weapons which were the basis for the invasion.

The outcome of their efforts could have a crucial bearing on the political futures of both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and – to a lesser extent – US President George Bush.

Dr Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector credited with dismantling Saddam’s nuclear programme in the 1990s, stressed his report provided just a “snapshot” of the on-going investigation.

“The report does not represent a final reckoning of Iraq’s WMD programmes, nor are we at the point where we are prepared to close the file on any of these programmes,” he said.

“While solid progress – I would say even remarkable progress considering the conditions that the ISG has had to work under – has been made in this initial period of operations, much remains to be done.”

He added: “It is far too early to reach any definitive conclusions and, in some areas, we may never reach that goal.”

The ISG’s efforts had been hindered by deliberate dispersal and destruction of material on WMD as well as systematic and deliberate looting of sites, he said.

Some WMD scientists had crossed borders and could have taken evidence with them, while the size of any actual WMD material compared to conventional arms made it “difficult to near impossible” to find, he added.

“From birth, all of Iraq’s WMD activities were highly compartmentalised within a regime that ruled, and kept its secrets, through fear and terror and with deception and denial built into each programme,” he said.

Dr Kay went on to detail the evidence of WMD-related programmes which had been discovered by the ISG.

“We have discovered dozens of WMD-related programme activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the UN during the inspections that began in late 2002,” he said.

These included a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses that contained equipment suitable for continuing chemical and biological weapons research.

The ISG also found reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist’s home, one of which could be used to produce biological weapons.

Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000km – well beyond the 150km range imposed by the UN – were also found.

Iraqi scientists and senior government officials had also admitted to the ISG that Saddam remained “firmly committed” to acquiring nuclear weapons, though no documentary evidence had been found.

Dr Kay said: “Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who worked in his military-industrial programmes, had not given up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass destruction.”

Speaking at a Pentagon news briefing tonight, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: “David Kay tells us he has not completed his work.

“They have a lot of work left to do, they have a lot of people left to interrogate, they have a lot of leads still to worry through, they have a number of suspect sites that they have not yet visited.”

He said he had “not seen anything” which led him to believe the intelligence which formed the basis for war was inaccurate.

He added: “I expect there to be considerable variations between what the intelligence suggested and what is eventually found on the ground.

“That has been true of intelligence since man began trying to gather intelligence.”

Mr Straw, who earlier today defended the decision to go to war despite growing evidence that the threat posed by Iraq was much less than the Government had stated, said that Mr Kay had presented a “serious report”.

He said: “The ISG has produced further conclusive and incontrovertible evidence that the Saddam regime was indeed in breach of UNSCR 1441.

“Kay’s report confirms how dangerous and deceitful the regime was, and how the military action was indeed both justified and essential to remove the dangers.”

The report contained “compelling evidence of concealment” and showed that Saddam remained “firmly committed” to acquiring nuclear weapons.

“The Iraq Survey Group report is an interim report, produced in three months in difficult circumstances,” Mr Straw said.

“As the report says, it is too early to reach conclusions. But it contains much information which should on any objective judgment lead to the conclusion that the Saddam regime was employed in a wide range of illegal activities in contravention of categorical UN obligations.”

Andrew Murray, chairman of the Stop The War Coalition, which has organised demonstrations in London this year, said the report confirmed the reasons given for going to war were false.

“The Prime Minister now owes the nation an apology. His refusal to do so at this week’s Labour party conference and his invitation to President Bush to visit Britain next month will ensure continuing protests from the millions of people who opposed the war all along,” he said.

The Muslim Association of Britain said the reports proved the anti-war movement was right to claim that the war was “immoral and illegal”.

And the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament renewed its our call for a full independent judicial inquiry into when and why the UK decided to wage war against Iraq.