NOTHING FOUND SO FAR

THE BBC's leaked report from Washington yesterday that the British and American team looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has so far found nothing was handled with kid gloves by the BBC. It emphasized that what it had seen was no more than “a section of a draft of an interim report”. The caution is understandable. Andrew Gilligan's disputed report in May this year is still top news and, by a bizarre coincidence, yesterday's leak came exactly one year to the day that the British government published its dossier on weapons of mass destruction which is still in the news because of its relevance to the Hutton Inquiry. There have been rumours for a few weeks that the Iraq Survey Group, set up by Britain and the United States immediately after the war ended to find weapons of mass destruction, had discovered nothing of significance. Last week's statement by Hans Blix, the former UN weapons inspector, that any such weapons had probably been destroyed ten years ago, may have owed something in its timing to news that he had picked up about the Survey Group's work. This report is of immense importance to Tony Blair's reputation. He has already hedged his bet on there being weapons of mass destruction by adding “or programmes for them” to his claim. But if no actual weapons or agents are found Mr Blair's claim that they were a “real and present” threat that had to be countered by urgent military action will be exposed once and for all. There are many Members of Parliament and countless members of the public who supported the war only because the Prime Minister said the weapons existed and the threat was real.