Britain warned yesterday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's efforts to rebuild chemical, biological and nuclear weapons threaten the world, but its long-awaited Iraq dossier gave little fresh ammunition for Saddam's foes.
The dossier setting out Prime Minister Tony Blair's case for action against Saddam said Iraq could launch chemical or biological wea-pons at 45 minutes notice and is also seeking a nuclear capability.
Blair, facing unease from many members of his Labour Party over a possible strike on Iraq, urged the international community to ensure Iraq disarms and said nobody wanted military conflict. But he said he was in no doubt Iraq and its neighbors would be better off without Saddam and that while diplomacy was pursued, preparation for action must continue.
"Our case is simply this. Not that we take military action come what may. But that the case for ensuring Iraqi disarmament is overwhelming," Blair told parliament yesterday during an emergency debate on Iraq.
"Alongside the diplomacy there must be genuine preparedness and planning to take action if diplomacy fails," he said.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, in turn, accused Blair of scaremongering about Iraqi capabilities.
"The aim is to justify what cannot be justified. The aim is to justify hostile intentions towards Iraq," Sabri told reporters while leaving Cairo for Damascus. He said Blair had made similar claims about Iraq in the past.
The 50-page document drew on intelligence sources and satellite pictures of sites where it said Iraq was rebuilding its weapons.
Iraq had hidden 20 ballistic missiles from UN inspectors charged with scrapping its weapons of mass destruction and was speeding up work on missiles with a range of over 1,000km, it said.
Baghdad had also sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa in an attempt to reconstitute its nuclear program -- but would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon if UN sanctions on Iraq remained in force, the dossier said.
Analysts said the long-awaited dossier, first promised six months ago, contained little new evidence and little to justify immediate military action against Iraq.
Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies, said the dossier made a powerful case for more muscular UN weapons inspections but did not make the case for war.
"There really is nothing new in it. Nothing that I haven't seen or heard of before," Heyman said. "We were all expecting the evidence for war and what we got was evidence for UN inspections."
The dossier said Iraq had developed mobile biological weapons laboratories to help conceal production from military attack -- or from UN inspectors if they were allowed back into Iraq after a four-year absence.
Iraqi-born analyst Mustafa Alani said Blair's case was centered not on the issue of weapons of mass destruction, but what the dossier called "the violent and aggressive nature of Saddam's regime."
"There is no smoking gun," Alani said, describing many of the allegations as "circumstantial evidence, second or third hand."
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