British Prime Minister Tony Blair was Saturday night at the center of an embarrassing row after the most senior US official in Baghdad bluntly rejected Blair's assertion that secret weapons laboratories had been discovered in Iraq.
In a Christmas message to British troops, Blair claimed there was "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine labor-atories." The Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) had unearthed compelling evidence that showed former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had attempted to "conceal weapons," the prime minister said.
But in an interview yesterday, Paul Bremer, the Bush administration's top official in Baghdad, flatly dismissed the claim as untrue -- without realizing its source was Blair.
It was, he suggested, a "red herring," probably put about by someone opposed to military action in Iraq who wanted to undermine the coalition.
"I don't know where those words come from but that is not what [ISG chief] David Kay has said," he told ITV1's Jonathan Dimbleby TV program. "It sounds like a bit of a red herring to me."
With confusion apparently growing between London and Washington over weapons of mass destruction, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell said he would be pressing ministers when parliament returned in the New Year on what precisely the government knew.
"It is high time the prime minister cleared this matter up once and for all," he said.
Blair made his remarks in a pre-Christmas interview with the British Forces Broadcasting Service, heard by the 10,000 British troops stationed in southern Iraq. In recent days, senior Whitehall officials have raised the extraordinary possibility that Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction after all -- but believed he did after being misled by his own advisors.
In his interview on Saturday, Bremer was forced to pull back when told the claims of hidden weapons laboratories were made by Blair.
"There is actually a lot of evidence that has been made public," he said, adding that this included "clear evidence" of ongoing biological and chemical programs, as well as rocket production that violated UN Security Council resolutions. Bremer also dismissed Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, as "out of touch."
Earlier, Blix had ridiculed the prime minister's laboratories claim as "innuendo." It was "increasingly clear" that Saddam did not have any weapons of mass destruction left when US and British forces invaded Iraq, he said.
NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT: An official said that Guan Guan’s comments had gone beyond the threshold of free speech, as she advocated for the destruction of the ROC China-born media influencer Guan Guan’s (關關) residency permit has been revoked for repeatedly posting pro-China content that threatens national security, the National Immigration Agency said yesterday. Guan Guan has said many controversial things in her videos posted to Douyin (抖音), including “the red flag will soon be painted all over Taiwan” and “Taiwan is an inseparable part of China,” while expressing hope for expedited “reunification.” The agency received multiple reports alleging that Guan Guan had advocated for armed reunification last year. After investigating, the agency last month issued a notice requiring her to appear and account for her actions. Guan Guan appeared as required,
A strong cold air mass is expected to arrive tonight, bringing a change in weather and a drop in temperature, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The coldest time would be early on Thursday morning, with temperatures in some areas dipping as low as 8°C, it said. Daytime highs yesterday were 22°C to 24°C in northern and eastern Taiwan, and about 25°C to 28°C in the central and southern regions, it said. However, nighttime lows would dip to about 15°C to 16°C in central and northern Taiwan as well as the northeast, and 17°C to 19°C elsewhere, it said. Tropical Storm Nokaen, currently
PAPERS, PLEASE: The gang exploited the high value of the passports, selling them at inflated prices to Chinese buyers, who would treat them as ‘invisibility cloaks’ The Yilan District Court has handed four members of a syndicate prison terms ranging from one year and two months to two years and two months for their involvement in a scheme to purchase Taiwanese passports and resell them abroad at a massive markup. A Chinese human smuggling syndicate purchased Taiwanese passports through local criminal networks, exploiting the passports’ visa-free travel privileges to turn a profit of more than 20 times the original price, the court said. Such criminal organizations enable people to impersonate Taiwanese when entering and exiting Taiwan and other countries, undermining social order and the credibility of the nation’s
‘SALAMI-SLICING’: Beijing’s ‘gray zone’ tactics around the Pratas Islands have been slowly intensifying, with the PLA testing Taiwan’s responses and limits, an expert said The Ministry of National Defense yesterday condemned an intrusion by a Chinese drone into the airspace of the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) as a serious disruption of regional peace. The ministry said it detected the Chinese surveillance and reconnaissance drone entering the southwestern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone early yesterday, and it approached the Pratas Islands at 5:41am. The ministry said it immediately notified the garrison stationed in the area to enhance aerial surveillance and alert levels, and the drone was detected in the islands’ territorial airspace at 5:44am, maintaining an altitude outside the effective range of air-defense weaponry. Following
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