New report says Iraq had no banned weapons as "Phantom Fury" rumbles on

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The argument for last year's invasion was undermined by a US admission that Saddam Hussein had no banned weapons at the time, as US and Iraqi forces pressed their assault on rebel redoubts with a major operation south of the capital.
The US military said 17 suspected insurgents were captured Wednesday in the towns of Haswah and Iskandariyah, immediately south of Baghdad, during joint raids with Iraqi forces.
The arrests brought to 60 the number of those detained since Tuesday's start of an operation dubbed "Phantom Fury".
More than 1,300 marines and soldiers, and 800 Iraqi military and police personnel, were involved in the operation, which comes less than a week after a massive offensive to retake the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
Four marines, three Iraqi national guardsmen and three civilians have been wounded in the fighting so far, according to the military.
Elsewhere, a US soldier was killed and his interpreter wounded in a roadside bomb attack Thursday near the northern oil refinery town of Baiji, after another soldier was killed and two wounded late Wednesday in a bomb attack on their convoy near Fallujah, an insurgent enclave west of the capital.
In other violence, an official with US-funded Iraqi television was gunned down in the main northern city of Mosul on Thursday, police said.
A suicide car bomb in the far-western town of Anah on Wednesday killed at least 10 people and wounded 24, most of them men waiting to sign up in the country's fledgling national guard.
Meanwhile, an Internet statement purported to be from a militant group accused of links with Al-Qaeda has claimed the kidnapping of a "Kurdish spy" and the recent killing of a police chief in the town of Baladruz, northeast of Baghdad.
In Washington, chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons were essentially destroyed in 1991, but Saddam wanted to recreate them after UN sanctions were lifted.
Duelfer spoke as he presented the findings of a more-than-1,000-page report.
"Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's (weapons) capability -- which was essentially destroyed in 1991 -- after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed," the report said.
Later President George W. Bush sounded a defiant note on the decision to invade Iraq without directly referring to the report, saying sanctions-ravaged Iraq would have had the potential to supply terrorists with banned weapons if Saddam's regime had remained in power.
"We had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons," he told supporters. "One regime stood out. The dictatorship of Saddam Hussein."
Bush's staunchest ally in the war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, seized on the report's finding that Saddam intended to revive his weapons programme as justification for the invasion.
"I welcome the report because I think it will show us that it is far more of a complicated situation than people thought," Blair told reporters while on a visit to Ethiopia.
In addition to the controversy over Saddam's alleged weapons arsenal, there has been no conclusive evidence so far linking the ousted regime with members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, despite assertions to that effect by officials in Bush's administration.
Many analysts believe Iraq became a safe haven for Islamic militants from overseas only after the US-led invasion.
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has vowed to cleanse cities like Fallujah and Ramadi of their influence before nationwide elections promised for January, which he insists must be held on time.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has urged his followers to take part in the elections, politicians said Thursday after a meeting with the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority.
Allawi, meanwhile, has held out the possibility of a negotiated restoration of government control over insurgent-held towns.
"We're addressing the security situation now throughout the country. As you know, there has been progress in Samarra, there is progress in Sadr City and we hope to make progress in Fallujah," he said Wednesday.
But the Islamic Army in Iraq issued a statement, whose authenticity could not be verified, warning rebels in Fallujah "not to be duped by the government as happened in Samarra."
Members of Allawi's government have been meeting over the past few weeks with a delegation from the Sunni rebel bastion of Fallujah to try to thrash out a deal allowing Iraqi forces to patrol the city while giving amnesty to some insurgents.
A similar agreement is also being discussed for the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, where a clutch of diehard loyalists of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr have continued to attack US and Iraqi forces.
A Sadr spokesman in Baghdad confirmed that talks were continuing with Allawi's government through tribal mediators but added that no deal had yet been reached amid persistent US military strikes.
Residents of Sadr City claimed US warplanes raided the area Wednesday night, but the military said explosions heard in the area were the sound of US forces detonating roadside bombs planted by the militiamen.
Warplanes did hit militia positions on Tuesday night, the US military confirmed.