12 February 2004	Thursday	20 Zilhaj 1424

WASHINGTON, Feb 11: The former chief of the group of experts responsible for finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, David Kay, said on Tuesday there was no point in continuing to hunt for arms, saying these "really did not exist".

"I think finding them is probably the wrong approach, the wrong strategy," Dr Kay said at a news conference. "Iraq is as large as California, Baghdad is as large as LA (Los Angeles).

Have you looked every possible place? The answer to that question is always going to be no. My confident prediction is that 20 years from now, maybe 50 years from now, people will still be digging things up in Iraq," he said.

When you "look for the production processes, learn where they have been produced, look for the people that have been involved in that production, look for the records, ... pretty soon you reach the conclusion they really did not exist", he said. "My personal conclusion is that there were no large stockpiles of chemical and biological weaponized material." -AFP