British Prime Minister Tony Blair told lawmakers on Tuesday that alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) possessed by Saddam Hussein "may never be found" in Iraq.

Blair, who led Britain to join the US-led war against Iraq on the ground that Iraq's banned weapons posed threat to the international community, told a committee of senior lawmakers that

he had "to accept that we have not found them and we may never find them."

However, he argued this did not mean Saddam had not been a threat.

Blair had been insisting that coalition forces in Iraq could find evidence that Saddam had possessed WMD.  

Saddam had been in breach of United Nations resolutions and his weapons might have been "removed, hidden or destroyed," the prime minister said.

The US-led Iraq Survey Group has been hunting for Saddam's alleged banned weapons in Iraq for more than a year and its final report on WMD has yet to be published. 

(Xinhua News Agency July 7, 2004)