Iraq report 'will clear Canberra'
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Foreign minister Alexander Downer.
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CANBERRA, Australia -- An Australian parliamentary inquiry has concluded the government did not doctor intelligence on Iraqi weapons in the run-up to the war, a newspaper report says.
But Australian intelligence services will be criticized in the report for not providing advice of the highest standard, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said, quoting an unnamed source intimate with the as-yet unreleased report's findings.
The report is expected to be released in early March.
Australia was one of the first countries to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, sending 2,000 military personnel there on the basis of U.S. and British warnings of an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.
But nearly a year after the invasion of Iraq, no such weapons have been found.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Tuesday there was "no evidence" Canberra had "sexed-up" the threat of Iraq's WMDs.
"I don't think any of these inquiries in America, Britain or here are going to reveal anything terribly exciting or surprising. There's been no evidence to suggest that the British, the American and the Australian governments were lying," Reuters reports him as saying.
Downer on Monday evening defended the Australian government's decision to join the war saying there was "no doubt" that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had WMD programs.
"What we clearly weren't wrong about was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction programs and that's been reinforced by what [chief U.S. weapons inspector] David Kay has said and what the Iraq Survey Group has shown," Downer told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program.
