We Won’t Find WMDs: British Officials

"Senior government sources are telling me that they no longer believe that physical weapons of mass destruction are actually going to be found in Iraq," the BBC’s respected political editor Andrew Marr reported.

"They don’t think that there were no weapons program. They believe that interviews with Iraqi scientists, perhaps documentation will be uncovered which will reveal the extent of program that were then in the past."

"But when it comes to physical evidence I have to say that the belief that that will be found and can be paraded in front of the cameras seems to be trickling into the sand," Marr said on BBC television.

‘Dramatic Development’

Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the admissions were a "dramatic development" and ex-Prime Minister John Major has called for a full independent inquiry into the basis for invasion.

"This is a dramatic development. Remember the government told us that Saddam had real weapons, which made him a real and present danger – and that’s why we had to go to war there and then,” said Cook, who resigned as leader of the Commons in the run-up to the invasion.

Cook told the BBC that "Parliament voted for war because it was told that Saddam did have real weapons of mass destruction, adding that it would have been better to have given the U.N. weapons inspectors more time to finish their job, rather than rushing to the invasion.

"They said we could not afford the time to let Hans Blix and the U.N. weapons inspectors finish the job.

"We now know that was wrong and we could have let them finish their task and they would have told us what we have now discovered but we did not need to have a war to find out."

"We would now know what we’re being told, that Saddam did not have those weapons… and we’d have found out without a war in which thousands were killed,” said Cook.