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The mother of a North soldier who died
in the Gulf has said that Tony Blair should be prosecuted as a war
criminal if no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq.
Ann Nichol lost her Royal Marine son
John Cecil, 36, in the Iraq war when the Sea Knight helicopter he
was travelling in crashed in Kuwait in the first days of the
conflict.
Now she has reacted angrily to the
admission by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that weapons of
mass destruction - WMD - may never be found in Iraq. Before the war
Mr Blair and President Bush justified the toppling of Saddam by
claiming he had biological and chemical weapons.
Ann said: "If this turns out to be a
lie then Tony Blair should resign. He should also be prosecuted
under international law as a war criminal.
"If they don't find any weapons of
mass destruction then this war has been based on a pack of lies and
they have put all of our sons and daughters lives on the line for a
lie."
With no physical evidence of WMDs
found in Iraq so far, pressure is mounting on Mr Blair.
Two trucks fitted with laboratory
equipment have been found, but experts found no trace of chemical or
biological weapons in them.
And captured Iraqi scientists who
worked on the WMD programme insist that all such weapons were
destroyed in the 1990s.
Mr Blair was left red-faced during an
official visit to the former war zone last week when Mr Rumsfeld
suggested that the Iraqis might have destroyed their nuclear and
chemical weapons before the start of the war.
Then US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz sparked further outrage by stating that "bureaucratic
reasons" were behind the decision to make WMD the main justification
for going to war.
The Prime Minister last night said he
still believed that weapons of mass destruction would be found in
Iraq.
But Ann, 58, of Gateshead, said: "We
didn't fight this war for just reasons as there wasn't any threat to
the UK from Saddam Hussein.
"Its important that they find these
weapons for all those families that have lost someone.
"However, I don't think that they will
ever find them."
Her son John, who was born in and
brought up in Sandyford, Newcastle, was a colour sergeant in the
Royal Marines.
He served in the first Gulf War and
had been in uniform since his was 17.
He was among a group of eight Marines
who were killed in the helicopter crash.
John was separated from his wife
Wendy, the mother of his daughter Paige.
He also had two stepchildren, Nicky
and Jodie, from his marriage.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said:
"The Prime Minister has no doubt that weapons of mass destruction
will be found. But we know it will take time to find them.
"The information in the dossier about
weapons of mass destruction was drawn from the Joint Intelligence
Committee and accepted by them.
"There are 12 years of UN resolutions
about these weapons so we know that they were there."
And Welsh Secretary Peter Hain
insisted yesterday that the evidence of Saddam's WMD seen by Cabinet
ministers was "absolutely convincing and conclusive".
New Iraq team to step up search for
WMDs
A new team of 1400 experts is to start
searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq amid claims that
the coalition exaggerated the threat that Saddam Hussein posed to
the world.
The Iraq Survey Group will be led by
Major General Keith Dayton of the US Defence Intelligence Agency. He
said its arrival would will bring about a "significant expansion" of
the hunt for biological and chemical weapons.
The investigators, from Britain, the
US and Australia, will shift the focus of the search away from areas
identified as suspicious before the war.
Instead it will look in places where
new documents and interviews with Iraqis suggest that weapons of
mass destruction could be hidden.
The new policy has been brought in
amid growing unease about the failure to find illegal weapons in
Iraq.
Before the war, the Bush
administration cited the threat from weapons of mass destruction as
the main reason for toppling Saddam's regime.
General Dayton said he was reasonably
confident that his team would find evidence of an illegal weapons
programme.
"This is not necessarily going to be
quick and easy, but it's going to be very thorough," he said. "There
is a lot of information out there that hasn't been gathered
yet."
The Iraq Survey Group will include 200
to 300 searchers who will travel around Iraq and hundreds of experts
to interrogate Iraqis.
Another 250 people will analyse
documents and computer files at a regional base in Qatar while
analysts put the pieces together and figure out what they mean.
The group, including military and
civilian experts, will begin taking over the weapons hunt no later
than June 7, with a two-week transition period.
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