Iraq Survey Group to confirm Iraq had no WMD

Report Iraq Survey Group will draw final conclusion there are no WMD in Iraq, adding pressure on Blair.

LONDON - The Iraq Survey Group is to confirm during the next fortnight that Saddam Hussein's regime had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction when it was invaded last year, the Guardian newspaper said Friday.

In a front-page report, it said it has learned that the team - charged with finding proof of Saddam's quest for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons - will deliver its report "in two weeks' time".

"It will draw the final conclusion that there are no WMD in the country, although the threat of Saddam was real," said the Guardian, which did not identify its sources.

The Iraq Survey Group, comprising more than 1,000 mainly US intelligence and weapons experts, fanned out across Iraq in July 2003, four months after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

In an interim report in October last year, its chief David Kay told the US Senate it had yet to find stocks of WMD, but added that it was not at a point where it could say definitely that such weapons did not exist.

Kay reiterated his position when he resigned three months later.

The Guardian said that the release of definitive conclusions in the next two weeks would put British Prime Minister Tony Blair in an awkward position, just as his governing Labour Party holds it annual conference.

To a greater extent than US President George W. Bush, Blair sought to justify taking Britain into the Iraq war by citing the threat of Iraqi WMD and the danger they might fall into terrorist hands.

In July, a British inquiry into pre-war intelligence said Iraq - which under Saddam defied a string of UN resolutions on WMD - most likely possessed no useable weapons of mass destruction before the March 2003 invasion.