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These officials assert that Saddam would have resumed nuclear weap-ons development at some future point”. But he adds: “We have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material.” The report said there was evidence that Iraq was developing a programme for unmanned drones.Critics of the Bush administration quickly seized on Mr Kay’s report. That said, nothing we have discovered rules out their potential use in BW production.”In regard to chemical weapons (CW), he said: “Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing centrally controlled CW programme after 1991.” He added: “We have not yet found evidence to confirm pre-war reporting that Iraqi military units were prepared to use CW against coalition forces.”Mr Kay’s report also found no evidence that Saddam had developed a nuclear weapons programme. “Investigation into [the two trailers] has yielded a number of explanations including hydrogen, missile propellant and BW production but technical limitations would limit these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers. He said other weapons-related activities had been discovered, all of which were concealed from UN inspectors But in a display of verbal gymnastics, he said of two tractor trailers discovered in northern Iraq and cited by the White House as proof of a WMD programme: “We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW production effort. Yet he said the team was still working to ascertain what these represented. The report said teams have discovered a network of clandestine laboratories and found live botulinum toxin ­ which could be used to make biological weapons ­ at an Iraqi scientist’s home.

Mr Kay said: “We have not yet found stocks of weapons but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively 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.” He laid out six reasons for his team’s failure to find proof of WMD, ranging from “WMD personnel” crossing borders before and after the conflict, to the relatively small size of any such weapons in contrast to Saddam’s conventional weapons.In regard to biological weapons (BW), Mr Kay claimed his team had uncovered “significant information” pointing towards the development of “BW-applicable organisms”. He also admitted that the pre-war intelligence on Iraq had proved to be in sharp contrast to the reality on the ground.But the former UN weapons inspector’s interim report to the House and Senate intelligence committees went out of its way to deflect blame from the White House. He told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One: “There was no imminent serious threat from Saddam Hussein which would justify brushing inspectors aside and going straight to war. We did have the extra time because frankly Saddam had nothing with which to threaten us.”If we had given the UN inspectors that extra time we would now know what the Iraq Survey Group is telling us – which is Saddam Hussein simply did not have any weapons of mass destruction and did not pose a threat to ourselves or indeed to neighbours.”.

But the threat was very clearly there and nothing that I have seen or heard in the months and years since Iraq has been an issue has moved me from that judgement.”The Foreign Secretary said that before hostilities there was “incontrovertible evidence” that Saddam had had chemical and biological weapons programmes.Mr Cook said the report would prove war was not “justified”. The Prime Minister, I recall, very clearly said he couldn’t say whether the threat would arise this week, next week, next year or in five years. This is an interim report and the issue that people should focus on is this: will they disclose evidence that this is a breach of the United Nations resolutions that would have triggered a war with UN support if that information had been before the UN?”Government sources added that the public would also be impressed by the level of detail in the report about programmes and plans unearthed in the country by the ISG.Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, also defended the Government’s decision to go to war by repeating his new emphasis this week that Saddam posed a real threat, even though it was not certain whether the threat was imminent or long term.Mr Straw told a news conference at the Foreign Office in London: “We did talk more broadly about the nature of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. It’s got to be a change of Saddam,” Mr Kay wrote at the time.. Tony Blair and Jack Straw tried last night to defend the war against Saddam Hussein by claiming that the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) would prove that the dictator had breached UN resolutions demanding full disclosure of his weapons of mass destruction programmes. Even in 1994, after he had left the IAEA, Mr Kay was making arguments the Bush administration used to justify the war.”There is no ultimate success that involves Unscom It’s got to be a change of regime. Under his watch the IAEA exposed Iraq’s extensive nuclear weapons programmes in the early 1990s.He was among a group of inspectors held hostage in a car park by Iraqi authorities for four days after being blocked from entering a facility.What appealed to the White House was not just Mr Kay’s experience, but his distrust of the Saddam Hussein regime And he had long given up on the UN inspection body, Unscom.