Report concludes no WMD as PM completes reshuffle
Tony Blair will be confronted with a fresh challenge over Iraq within the next two weeks when the long-awaited final report of the Iraq Survey Group concludes there were no weapons of mass destruction in the country at the time of the US-UK invasion.
The Guardian has learned that the team of weapons inspectors sent in by Washington and London at the end of the war to comb Iraq will find that though the threat of Saddam Hussein was real, there were no stockpiles.
The absence of banned weapons has long been suspected, but the finality of the report's conclusion, together with its timing on the eve of the Labour party conference in Brighton, will be controversial.
It may encourage Labour critics who want a show of repentance from Mr Blair and a promise of no more pre-emptive wars to be more vocal. The prime minister had hoped to focus the conference on domestic issues.
The news of the latest Iraq threat to Mr Blair's political leadership came as he completed a reshuffle designed to shore up his embattled premiership. Alan Milburn, the new policy supremo, attended the week's cabinet and urged his colleagues to "pull together". Although it has been obvious since last year that the Iraq Survey Group was unlikely to unearth anything, its final verdict is an embarrassment to President Bush and Mr Blair. Before the invasion, both governments claimed Saddam had a covert programme to produce chemical and biological weapons, to manufacture ballistic missiles and had renewed its search for a nuclear bomb. Mr Blair did, however, soften his stance in July, telling MPs: "I have to accept that we have not found them and that we may not find them."
The prime minister also faces other looming difficulties which could further rock his political stability through the autumn.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1301434,00.html
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