07 February 2004	Saturday	15 Zilhaj 1424

WASHINGTON, Feb 6: US President George Bush on Friday named a commission to investigate the yawning gap between pre-invasion claims about Iraqi weapons and post-invasion findings and report back after the November elections.

In hastily arranged remarks at the White House, Mr Bush noted that US arms hunters have not found the chemical and biological arsenals at the core of his case for invading Iraq and said: "We are determined to figure out why."

The nine-member commission will "look at America's intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction," and report back by March 31 next year, said the president.

It will also look into US intelligence on weapons programs in North Korea and Iraq, as well as on threats posed by Libya before it agreed to disarm and Afghanistan before US forces ousted the Taliban, he said.

Bush said he had directed federal agencies to cooperate fully with the panel to be led by former Virginia governor and ex-senator Charles Robb, a Democrat, and retired appeals judge Laurence Silberman, a conservative.

He also named Republican Senator John McCain, a frequent critic of the administration who was among the first to call for launching an independent probe into Iraq weapons intelligence, to the commission.

Other members include Lloyd Cutler, who served as White House counsel under Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton; Yale University President Richard Levin; Admiral Bill Studeman, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Judge Pat Wald, a former appeals judge.

Bush, who dropped his opposition to launching such an investigation just this Monday, left two seats vacant but indicated they would be filled when other members cleared the vetting process.

Ahead of the announcement, Bush met with Charles Duelfer, the new head of the Iraq Survey Group that has been hunting for evidence of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the core of the case for the March 2003 invasion.

"The president said to him that he wants him to find the truth. It is important that we know all the facts, that's what the president expressed," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

Critics have pre-emptively warned that the hand-picked panel cannot be independent, noting that Bush would appoint its members with no formal input from the US Congress. -AFP