Former United Nations arms inspector Hans Blix said on Thursday that the war on Iraq was not justified and that Washington and London ”over-interpreted” intelligence data, while a new message attributed to ousted president Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to fight United States occupying forces.
In a further sign of their nervousness under almost daily attacks, US troops killed an Iraqi teenager and wounded four others during wedding celebrations in the flashpoint town of Fallujah, witnesses said.
Blix, who only a day earlier had said Saddam had not had weapons of mass destruction for 10 years before the war, spoke again after US President George Bush said there was no proof tying Baghdad to the September 11 terror attacks in the US.
”No, I don’t think so,” Blix told BBC radio when asked if the March 20 US-led invasion that led to the fall of Saddam’s regime was justified.
Asked if the US and Britain had talked up the case for war, Blix replied: ”They over-interpreted.”
Blix said the US and Britain were ”convinced” Saddam was going in the direction of developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
”I think it is understandable against the background of the man that they did so,” he said.
”But in the Middle Ages, when people were convinced there were witches, when they looked for them, they certainly found them.”
On Wednesday, Blix told Australian national radio Saddam had misled the world into believing he still possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to ward off any attack.
The latest ”Saddam tape” — previous ones have been deemed authentic by US intelligence — was broadcast by the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite channel Wednesday.
”O mujahedeen, you must tighten the noose and increase your strikes against the enemies by demonstrating, writing on walls and demanding your rights … and above all through armed struggle,” the speaker said.
”I ask you to withdraw your army, as soon as possible and without any conditions,” he told the occupying powers.
”Your withdrawal from our country is unavoidable, if not today then tomorrow.”
The message came as US troop casualties in Iraq rose further, with four more soldiers wounded in two separate attacks on convoys.
And late on Wednesday in Fallujah, 50km west of the capital, US soldiers opened fire, killing a 14-year-old and wounding four others, when their convoy passed near a house where a wedding was under way and celebratory shots were being fired in the air, according to an AFP reporter and witnesses.
The troops, who regularly come under attack in the Sunni Muslim town, apparently thought they were being targeted and shot in the direction of both the people taking part in the wedding and passers-by.
On Saturday the US military apologised after nine security guards from Fallujah were killed the previous day when US troops opened fire as the guards were apparently engaged in a high-speed car chase.
The Pentagon says 297 US military personnel have lost their lives to hostile fire, accidents or self-inflicted wounds since the war began in March. Of those, 189 were killed by hostile fire.
In Washington, Bush — who had justified the US-led invasion by saying Baghdad had unconventional weapons and ties to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network — said the US ”had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th”.
Bush said, however, there was ”no question” of Saddam’s links to al-Qaeda, and charged that the now-defunct Baathist regime aided a Bin Laden ally who masterminded the slaying of a US aid worker in Jordan.
His comments came a week after an opinion poll found that nearly 70% of Americans believe that Saddam’s regime was linked to the attacks that left 3 000 people dead two years ago.
Meanwhile, US officials said they were making changes to Washington’s draft UN Security Council resolution seeking international assistance for Iraq to make it more palatable to countries that objected to the original document.
But they stressed that no decisions had yet been made about how many changes would be included when a new draft is sent to the UN in the coming weeks.
European Union external affairs commissioner Chris Patten, on a lightning visit to Baghdad, said that getting security right was crucial to efforts to rebuild the country.
Patten, who met with Iraqi and coalition officials, said the more the international community was involved in rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, the easier it would be to create stability.
That was underscored by news that the governing council will send a high-ranking delegation to attend crucial upcoming meetings at the UN and to meet with Bush.
South Korea has meanwhile decided to send a fact-finding mission to Iraq next week to seek more details on the security situation following a controversial US request to send thousands of troops to the war-torn country.
For their part, the prime ministers of Turkey and India, also both under US pressure to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq, said a new UN resolution would help facilitate their decisions.
And Japan said on Thursday it was ready to bear ”a due share” in contributions to reconstruct Iraq, without specifying how much of the bill it would foot.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, an opponent of the war, said in an interview published on Thursday that Berlin is prepared to help train Iraqi police and soldiers, in a sign that its differences with the US are over.
He told the Handelsblatt business daily that the offer stood independent of any UN resolution on Iraq’s post-war reconstruction. — Sapa-AFP