BRUSSELS, Belgium - European critics of the Iraq war expressed shock
Friday at published remarks by a senior U.S. official playing down Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the conflict.
In an interview in the next issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited "bureaucratic reasons" for focusing
on Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal and said a "huge" reason for the war
was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia.
"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass
destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on,"
Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.
He said one reason for going to war against Iraq that was "almost
unnoticed but huge" was the need to maintain American forces in Saudi
Arabia as long as Saddam was in power.
Those troops were sent to Saudi Arabia to protect the desert kingdom
against Saddam, whose forces invaded Kuwait in 1991, but their presence in
the country that houses Islam's holiest sites enraged Islamic
fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden.
Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, the United States announced it
was removing most of its 5,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and would set up
its main regional command center in Qatar.
However, those goals were not spelled out publicly as the United States
sought to build international support for the war. Instead, the Bush
administration focused on Saddam's failure to dismantle chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons programs.
The failure of U.S. forces to locate extensive weapons stocks has
raised doubts in a skeptical Europe whether Iraq represented a global
security threat.
Wolfowitz's comments followed a statement by Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld, who suggested this week that Saddam might have destroyed his
banned weapons before the war began.
On Friday, the commander of U.S. Marines in Iraq said he was surprised
that extensive searches have failed to discover any of the chemical
weapons that U.S. intelligence had indicated were supplied to front line
Iraqi forces at the outset of the war.
"Believe me, it's not for lack of trying," Lt. Gen. James Conway told
reporters. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between
the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."
The remarks by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld revived the controversy over the
war as President Bush left for a European tour in which he hopes to put
aside the bitterness over the war, which threatened the trans-Atlantic
partnership.
In Denmark, whose government supported the war, opposition parties
demanded to know whether Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen misled the
public about the extent of Saddam's weapons threat.
"It was not what the Danish prime minister said when he advocated
support for the war," Jeppe Kofod, the Social Democrats' foreign affairs
spokesman, said in response to Wolfowitz's comments. "Those who went to
war now have a big problem explaining it."
Former Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen said he was
shocked by Wolfowitz's claim. "It leaves the world with one question: What
should we believe?" he told The Associated Press.
In Germany, where the war was widely unpopular, the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeiting newspaper said the comments about Iraqi weapons showed
that America is losing the battle for credibility.
"The charge of deception is inescapable," the newspaper said
Friday.
In London, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit as
leader of the House of Commons to protest the war, said he doubted Iraq
had any such weapons.
"The war was sold on the basis of what was described as a pre-emptive
strike, 'Hit Saddam before he hits us,' " Cook told British Broadcasting
Corp. "It is now quite clear that Saddam did not have anything with which
to hit us in the first place."
During a visit to Poland, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Friday
he has "absolutely no doubt" that concrete evidence will be found of
Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
"Have a little patience," Blair told reporters.
Wolfowitz was in Singapore, where he is due to speak Saturday at the
Asia Security Conference of military chiefs and defense ministers from
Asian and key Western powers.
He told reporters at the conference that the United States will
reorganize its forces worldwide to confront the threat of terrorism.
"We are in the process of taking a fundamental look at our military
posture worldwide, including in the United States," Wolfowitz said. "We're
facing a very different threat than any one we've faced
historically."
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