IRAQ: President George Bush has said it would only be a matter of time before US troops uncovered the weapons of mass destruction that Washington used to justify its war to oust Saddam Hussein. With postwar Iraq facing episodes of violence and lawlessness, Poland's foreign minister said a multinational stabilisation force - formed to police the shattered country - would be deployed later this month.
Almost a month after toppling Saddam, US-led forces have failed to find the chemical or biological weapons that Bush said threatened the United States.
But a senior US official said only 10 per cent of nearly 1,000 on a list of suspected weapons sites supplied to the US military had been inspected and there were perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 more not on the list.
Reminding reporters that Iraq was the size of California and that the ousted Iraqi government had years to hide its illicit arsenal in tunnels and caves, President Bush declared: "Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." "We will find them. And it will be a matter of time to do so," he told said during a joint news conference at his Crawford, Texas, ranch with Australian Prime Minister Mr John Howard.
In Washington, Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said he was confident Saddam would be found if still alive and his weapons of mass destruction uncovered.
Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, whose country, along with Australia, also sent forces to help with the invasion, said that the United States, Britain and Poland would lead the 10-nation stabilisation force, which would arrive by the end of May.
"The idea is to have all the countries ready to engage there by the end of this month," he said.
British Foreign Secretary Mr Jack Straw was more reticent on the deployment, saying "no final decisions have been made". A senior US official has said Iraq will be divided into three as yet undefined sectors, one patrolled by about 20,000 US soldiers and the other two by contingents under British and Polish command.
Ten nations have so far offered troops. Apart from the three lead nations, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and Albania have volunteered troops, said the US official.
The official said the stabilization force would be separate from the 135,000 US-led combat troops still in Iraq.
Yesterday, Iraqis dug corpses from a mass grave at a farmland site near the Shia Muslim holy city of Najaf. Iraqis dug through earth to uncover scores of bodies, some with blindfolds and hands tied, of men and women apparently executed during a 1991 Shia uprising. Bullet casings, combs, coins and watches lay among them. Some had identity cards in their rotting clothes. Yellow twine coated with a coppery crust, possibly blood, bound their wrists.
On Saturday, Iraqis uncovered another mass grave near the ancient city of Babylon, digging up dozens of bones wrapped in stained blankets and skulls with rectangles cut out of the back. - (AFP, Reuters)
