Australian Prime Minister used US Proof to Go to War, says Blix by Caroline Overington, New York The Age 4:26pm 25th Jun, 2003   June 25 2003    The Howard Government based its decision to go to war in Iraq on evidence from US intelligence agencies, rather than on the more cautious reports compiled by United Nations weapons inspectors, UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday.    Dr Blix told The Age that the Australian Government appeared to have been influenced by "intelligence that their brethren bought up in the UK and the US". He said that some of that evidence "did not turn out to be very impressive".    While he cautioned that weapons of mass destruction may still be found in Iraq, it was also possible that Iraq's weapons were destroyed in 1991.    Dr Blix, speaking after his last official function before retiring as chief UN weapons inspector on 30 June, also praised the Australian scientists who went to Baghdad before the war, to help search for Iraq's weapons. "They were excellent," he said.    "We had lots of staff from Australia, very competent staff. Australia is one of the most active (nations) on non-proliferation, maybe because you are producing yellowcake and uranium, and you have a sore conscience."    Dr Blix led a weapons inspection team into Baghdad last November but, after three-and-a-half months of searching and despite receiving intelligence tips from the US, Britain and other nations, such as France, that opposed the war, his teams found neither weapons, nor evidence that Iraq's old weapons had been destroyed.    The UN inspection team was withdrawn before the US-led war on Iraq in March. The US launched its own search for Iraq's weapons after the war, but has yet to find any.    President Bush has said that evidence of a weapons program will be found, but several nations have started inquiries, to see if the intelligence was exaggerated, to make a stronger case for war.    Dr Blix told an audience of academics, journalists and foreign policy experts at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last night that he found it fascinating that the US had "100 per cent certainty about weapons of mass destruction, and zero certainty about where they are".    "I don't exclude that they (the US) may find something," Dr Blix said. "It is possible but, as time goes by, it seems to me more and more justified to consider the possibility that, could it be true, that they (Iraq) destroyed it all in 1991." Visit the related web page
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