AAP,
The federal government should be open and honest about the reason Australia joined the war in Iraq, Labor leader Mark Latham said today.
Mr Latham was speaking after the resignation of United States chief weapons inspector David Kay, who said he had concluded there were no Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction stockpiles to be found.
Australia joined the US and Britain in the war in Iraq last year, citing the threat of weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by Iraq.
But Mr Latham today described as a major development comments by Kay that WMDs were no longer likely to be found in Iraq, and said the federal government now had to be honest.
“It's time for Mr Howard and (Foreign Minister Alexander) Downer to be open and honest with the Australian people, to join the debate and recognise that most likely the primary justification the government had for going to war in Iraq was invalid,” Mr Latham told reporters in Sydney.
Mr Latham said it was important that lessons be learnt from the experience.
“They need to talk about what went wrong so we get lessons out of it for the future,” Mr Latham said.
“If we ever again go to war, we have to make sure it is for a valid reason and proper purpose, and that all the checking and intelligence has been done so we don't end up in the circumstances we have today.”
Mr Latham was speaking after addressing an Australia Day citizenship ceremony in his south-western Sydney electorate of Werriwa.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer today said he did not accept David Kay's opinion that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Mr Downer told ABC radio: “I think it remains to be seen and the Iraqi survey group's work will continue''.
“What we do know from the report that Dr Kay produced a few months ago is that (former Iraqi president) Saddam Hussein certainly continued with chemical and biological weapons programs.
“Whether we'll find any stockpiles or not just remains to be seen.
“There's no doubt though that he maintained the intention to have that capability.''
Mr Downer said he was not surprised that nine months of searching had found nothing.
“It doesn't surprise me that this is taking a long time and it's obviously in a relatively difficult security environment,'' he said.
