British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a key ally of U.S. President George W. Bush in last year's invasion of Iraq, on Wednesday put a brave face on an inspectors' report that concluded Iraq had no illegal weapons. Charles Duelfer, leader of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) that has spent the past year seeking weapons of mass destruction President Saddam Hussein was said to have primed for use, told the U.S. Congress that no such weapons' stockpiles existed. "Just as I have had to accept that the evidence now is that there were not stockpiles of actual weapons ready to be deployed, I hope others have the honesty to accept that the report also shows that sanctions weren't working," Blair said. "Saddam Hussein was doing his best to get round those sanctions and had every intention of redeveloping these programmes and weapons of mass destruction," he told reporters at a news conference with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. "He was retaining the teams of scientists and the facilities to do so, and ... there were multiple breaches of the U.N resolutions which after all were the legal justification for the conflict," Blair, on a flying visit to Sudan and Ethiopia, said.
