SYDNEY, 17 June 2003 — A former Australian government defense analyst said “false” intelligence that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was used to justify the March 20 invasion, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Andrew Wilkie, who served with the Office of National Assessments, will expose what he calls the Australian government’s “exaggeration” of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the “concoction” of links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists when he gives evidence to a British parliamentary inquiry, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“Australia went to war with the US and UK without international endorsement, on the basis of what our prime minister described as a massive weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq,” he told the paper before leaving for London on Sunday. “That claim was obviously false.”
He added, “There is no doubt that Iraq did have weapons at one time, and something will eventually be found and dressed up as justification, but it won’t be anything of the magnitude we were led to believe existed.”
The Herald said the British Parliament’s foreign affairs select committee approached Wilkie on Thursday to provide an international perspective to its inquiry into allegations the Blair government fabricated intelligence on Iraq.
The Herald reported Australia’s opposition Labour Party was preparing a push this week for a parliamentary inquiry in Canberra into the gathering, analysis and use of intelligence before the war.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has dismissed calls for an investigation, but is facing a combined front of opposition and minor party numbers that could at least force an inquiry in the Senate, the paper said.
Meanwhile, Howard said in Parliament yesterday British and American intelligence reports had concluded that a trailer found in Iraq was a biological weapons facility, according the AAP news agency.
“United States and United kingdom intelligence agencies have concluded that at least one of the three vehicle trailers found in Iraq is a mobile production biological weapons production facility, and closely matches the description given to the United Nations Security Council in February by the United States,” Howard said.
Labour foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd had asked Howard to respond to media reports that British intelligence concluded the two trailers captured by allied forces in Iraq were not mobile germ warfare labs, but were used for producing hydrogen for artillery balloons.
“The Office of National Assessments remains confident in the judgment that there was a WMD capability in Iraq in the lead up to the war, and is continuing to assess the scope and the nature in the light of postconflict investigations,” said Howard.
“Those on the opposition who now seek to denigrate what this government and this country did are in effect calling for the restoration of Saddam Hussein.”
In another development, the delivery of badges to foreign diplomats posted in Baghdad has been put off until next week after a computer breakdown prevented the Foreign Ministry from starting issuing the badges yesterday, an official said in Baghdad.
“The issuing of the badges was due to start today but it has been put off to next Monday or Tuesday after the person charged with printing the cards had a problem with the computer,” Ghassan Hussein, who heads a caretaker steering committee, told AFP.
Hussein said some 30 diplomatic missions had reopened in the Iraqi capital, including those of “several Arab countries, namely Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, which are represented at charge d’affaires level or below.” On Thursday, the ministry began distributing a circular to “foreign liaison offices” in Baghdad in which the US-led coalition occupying Iraq warned the foreign diplomats that they remain in the country at their own risk.
The coalition, which has refused to grant the representatives of overseas governments diplomatic immunity, said foreign missions would only be able to deploy troops or guards for their own safety with its prior authorization. Hussein said that “70 to 80 percent of the 44 Iraqi ambassadors who had been posted abroad have been relieved of their duties for membership of the Baath Party” of deposed president Saddam Hussein. They include nine envoys who refused to return to Iraq despite being recalled home. Six percent of 550 diplomatic personnel had also been fired, he said.
