London: Robin Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons in protest against Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to join the US-led war against Iraq, on March 23 said the "probability is that Saddam Hussein has no weapons of mass destruction" and the UN inspectors should have been given time to finish their job before "we rushed into war".

Writing in 'Sunday Mirror' Cook said, "The success of war so far is because Saddam is so weak that his Army can't fight or won't fight. Yet the justification for the war was that Saddam was so strong that he was a serious threat.

"President Bush told us that we had to get in a pre-emptive strike against Saddam before he hit us first. Is there anyone who has seen bulletin after bulletin of Iraqi soldiers waving white flags who still believes they ever could have threatened the US or UK?

Referring to Saddam's military capability, Cook said, "There are no certainties in the shadowy world of intelligence. But the probability is that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction. Not in the normal sense of that term - a weapon capable of nuclear missile delivery against a strategic target. He certainly does not possess the blockbuster bombs with which the US Air Force is pounding Baghdad.

"He probably does have biological toxins and battlefield chemical shells. The US and the UK can be clear about that because we equipped him with them back in the 1980s," he pointed out.

PTI