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From Times Online
December 17, 2002

US doubts over Iraqi weapons declaration bring war closer

By Tim Reid
THE Bush Administration gave its first indication yesterday that last week’s Iraqi weapons declaration was insufficient and that war was becoming unavoidable. Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said that there were “problems” with the 12,000-page dossier, which was delivered to United Nations officials on December 7.

“We approached it with scepticism and the information I have received so far is that that scepticism is well-founded,” General Powell said in Washington.

At the same time Ari Fleischer, the official White House spokesman, said: “It was abundantly plain, from the will of the United Nations, that this was Iraq’s last chance to inform the world in an accurate, complete and full way what weapons of mass destruction they possessed.”

American and British officials have indicated already that the weapons dossier does not account for all of Baghdad’s chemical and biological agents, with one White House official claiming that it is “full of holes and omissions”.

General Powell said that Washington’s official response on the document would be made towards the end of this week, after Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, makes his presentation to the UN Security Council.

In the meantime, the first samples collected by inspectors in Iraq have arrived at a laboratory in Austria run by the UN nuclear agency, where they will be analysed for any traces of a nuclear weapons programme, a process that will take two to three weeks.

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