- WARSAW (Reuters) -- President
Aleksander Kwasniewski said Thursday Poland, a staunch supporter of last
year's U.S.-led war on Iraq, felt misled into believing that Saddam Hussein
had weapons of mass destruction.
-
- He said, however, that he believed the U.S.-led intervention
had turned Iraq into a better place and that Poland had no intention of
pulling out its troops there.
-
- "I believe...that Iraq today, without Saddam Hussein,
is a much better place than Iraq with Saddam Hussein," Kwasniewski
told a news conference.
-
- "Of course I feel a certain discomfort that we were
misled about weapons of mass destruction," he said.
-
- Kwasniewski said Poland could not verify information
about Saddam's suspected weapons, which have not been found in Iraq despite
efforts by the occupying U.S. forces, but had no choice but to believe
that the threat had been real.
-
- "We have to treat as a potential threat not only
the fact of weapons of mass destruction, but also a certain aura that such
weapons could be there," said Kwasniewski, blaming weak intelligence
by anti-Saddam allies.
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- Poland's role in Iraq, where it now controls a stabilization
zone, has irked European heavyweights Germany and France ahead of the post-communist
state's European Union accession in May.
-
- Kwasniewski's remarks signal Poland's growing discomfort
at being involved in Iraq after Spain's incoming socialist government pledged
to pull the country out of Iraq in the wake of deadly bomb attacks in Madrid
on March 11.
-
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