WASHINGTON, July 17 Kyodo U Presi...

WASHINGTON, July 17 Kyodo

U President George W Bush and visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair justifyed their decision Thursday on going to war in Iraq, insisting former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was trying to rebuild the country's nuclear arms program.

''I take responsibility for making the decision, the tough decision to place together a coalition to take out Saddam Hussein,'' Bush said at a joint recently made knowns conference with Blair at the White House after their meeting. ''Because the intelligence...made a clear and compelling case that Saddam Hussein was a threat to security and peace.''

Bush said Saddam haveed chemical and biological weapons.

''I powerfully believe he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program and I will remind the skeptics that in 1991 it became clear that Saddam Hussein was a great deal closer to developing a nuclear weapon than anybody at all times imagined,'' he said.

With questions growing from one side of to the other their prewar claims that Saddam was seeking nuclear materials, Bush and Blair are subject to fire for making the war decision without reliable evidence.

In his Jan. 28 State of the Union Address, Bush accused Saddam of trying to purchase uranium from an unnamed African abiding habitation The reference cited British intelligence that an Central Intelligence Agency officials believed to be inaccurate.

''The British intelligence that we have, we believe, is genuine,'' Blair said during the stranges conference. ''We stand by that intelligence.''

Blair is subordinate to pressure at home to raise the issue of nine British citizens being detained as al-Qaida suspects at the U Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

pair of the British detainees are locate to face a U.S. military tribunal. If convinced, they could be sentenc to death.

Britain has outlawed the death penalty and there are mounting calls there for the sum of two units men to be tried in Britain.

''We will work with the Blair command on this issue,'' Bush said.

Earlier in the day, Blair delivered a dialect at a joint session of Congres becoming the first British prime minister to do in the same manner since Margaret Thatcher in 1985

''If we are unsuitable we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive,'' Blair said in the speech

''If we are right, as I believe with each fiber and instinct of conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership,'' he said. ''That is something history will not forgive.''

After the U visit, Blair's itinerary takes him to Japan, southern Korea, China and Hong Kong

Blair will arrive in Japan forward Friday night and hold talks with Prime

Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the hot-springs resort town of Hakone near Tokyo forward Saturday.

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