COPENHAGEN, July 17: Denmark, as well as Britain and the United States, faced a growing credibility problem on Thursday over its claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The former UN chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix accused Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller of presenting an erroneous account to parliament on March 19 about the state of Iraq’s biological weapons capability.
The Danish government was one of the US’ staunchest allies in the Iraq war, but in justifying this position it wrongly interpreted the reports of the UN weapons inspectors, Mr Blix said.
Mr Moeller told parliament the inspectors had established that Iraq had produced 19,000 litres of botulinum toxin, 8,400 litres of anthrax and 2,000 litres of aflatoxin. He also said that the storage conditions of these supposed toxins had worsened in recent years.
Mr Blix said there was no proof for such assertions. He said the Iraqi authorities “maintained that they had destroyed these arms in 1991. They said they used to have them, but insisted absolutely that they did not have them any more, and the disarmament inspectors were unable to find any trace of them.”
It was the second time this week that Mr Blix had questioned Mr Moeller’s interpretation of the facts.
On Tuesday, he said in an interview with Politiken that the United States, Britain and Denmark had all drawn hasty, broad and undocumented conclusions in order to justify the war on Iraq.
Singling out Mr Moeller for criticism, Mr Blix said the three countries jumped to the conclusion that “because these weapons have not been accounted for, then they exist.”
But he added this was not the same as proof that the weapons existed. “Maybe they exist, maybe they don’t exist,” he said.
Left-wing opposition parties have denounced Mr Moeller’s interpretations of the UN reports and are demanding an inquiry into the real reason for the government’s decision to engage itself in the war. A 380-man Danish military contingent is serving in Iraq.
Mr Moeller acknowledged on Wednesday that he had wrongly quoted Mr Blix as saying in a television interview that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.—AFP
