May 30, 2003

The Guardian politics
Yasser Alaskary

"The issue of weapons of mass destruction is the way that America and Britain justified the war, but it would not have been the way that I justified it.

"I believe that there was a humanitarian disaster going on in Iraq for so many years under the regime of Saddam Hussein - and that was good enough on its own.

"That's quite clear if you look at the mass graves being dug up. If they'd based it on that, they would have been on much stronger ground.

"As an Iraqi, it doesn't concern me what trouble the UK or American administrations are in, what concerns me is that the Iraqi people have been liberated from Saddam.

"The major task is rebuilding the country and finding weapons of mass destruction doesn't aid that at all.

"It doesn't matter to ordinary Iraqis. I've spoken to relatives, who can now speak freely, and nobody mentions this."