US: Whether or not Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction is still an open question, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said yesterday after talks with the US Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, at the White House, writes Conor O'Clery Washington
The 40-minute meeting was primarily concerned with Iraq, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and transatlantic relations in light of the EU-US summit to be held during Ireland's EU presidency in the first half of next year.
On Northern Ireland Mr Cowen emphasised to Mr Cheney the need for elections in the autumn to give momentum to the peace process. "It's not rocket science to solve this problem," he said.
Mr Cheney strongly stated the US commitment to remove "all remnants of the Hussein regime" and to establish "a government for the Iraqi people by the Iraqi people," Mr Cowen told reporters at the White House.
On weapons of mass destruction, the US Vice-President had emphasised "the need to make sure that they identify whatever capability is there and to make sure it doesn't get into the wrong hands," he added.
The Bush administration has come under growing criticism for allegedly exaggerating intelligence to prove that the danger from Iraq's banned weapons was so great that war was necessary. No weapons have yet been found.
The White House on Monday admitted that a claim by Mr Bush in his State of the Union address in January about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa should not have been included.
On Capitol Hill yesterday, the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, said the US did not go to war with Iraq because of new evidence of banned weapons. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light - through the prism of our experience on 9/11," he said.
Asked if he still believed claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Mr Cowen replied: "That is still an open question. People are continuing to make that search. Certainly when the UN left in 1998 they had enumerated the level of capability that existed then, and the whole question was to get Saddam Hussein to satisfy the United Nations that in fact he had disposed of those weapons, that he no longer had them or that if he had them he would hand them over.
"The fact of the matter is that Saddam Hussein never did that and therefore the presumption of the existence of those weapons was one that was held by the international community . . . if Saddam Hussein didn't have them why would he not co-operate with the United Nations?"
Asked if he felt then that the war was justified, Mr Cowen replied: "We didn't support our participation in the war on the basis that we didn't get a second resolution. We made that point when we voted for Resolution 1441."
Security Council Resolution 1441 in November required Iraq to submit to aggressive new inspections, but did not contain specific authorisation for the use of military force without a second resolution.
The EU and the US are in agreement on the importance "from all our security points of view" that weapons of mass destruction were not available to terrorists or obtained by countries that did not abide by international treaties," Mr Cowen said.
"If there is any lesson from 9/11 it is the need to deal with that question to the satisfaction of everyone." The Minister for Foreign Affairs stressed the importance of the role of the UN representative to Iraq, Mr Sergio de Mello, and said the US was aware of Ireland's commitment to the multilateral involvement of the UN.
The issue of US retaliation against countries - such as Ireland - that refused to sign a bilateral agreement with Washington to exempt US citizens from the International Criminal Court did not come up, Mr Cowen said. The retaliation involves a suspension of US military aid.
"Ireland had never received military aid from the United States and therefore the fact that we might be on some list" is irrelevant, Mr Cowen said. "Ireland is a very strong friend of the United States. Ireland has excellent relations with the United States."
Mr Cowen briefed Mr Cheney on his recent visit to the Middle East and welcomed the involvement of the United States in implementing the road map to a Palestinian state.
Specific EU-US trade difference did not come up, Mr Cowen said. He said "the disagreements are in fact 3 per cent of the total trade that flows between the United States and Europe."