Executive
Summary
•
Mr Blair
also decided to publish an explanation of why action was
needed
to deal
with Iraq; and to recall Parliament to debate the
issue.
•
The UK made
a significant contribution to President Bush’s decision,
announced
on 12
September, to take the issue of Iraq back to the UN.
•
Statements
made by China, France and Russia after President Bush’s
speech
highlighted
the different positions of the five Permanent Members of the
Security
Council, in
particular about the role of the Council in deciding whether
military
action was
justified. As a result, the negotiation of resolution 1441 was
complex
and
difficult.
803.
The following
key findings are from Section 3.5:
•
The
declared objective of the US and UK was to obtain international
support
within the
framework of the UN for a strategy of coercive diplomacy for
the
disarmament
of Iraq. For the UK, regime change was a means to
achieve
disarmament,
not an objective in its own right.
•
The
negotiation of resolution 1441 reflected a broad consensus in the
UN
Security
Council on the need to achieve the disarmament of
Iraq.
•
To secure
consensus in the Security Council despite the different positions
of
the US and
France and Russia, resolution 1441 was a compromise
containing
drafting
‘fixes’.
•
That
created deliberate ambiguities on a number of key issues including:
the
level of
non‑compliance with resolution 1441 which would constitute a
material
breach; by
whom that determination would be made; and whether there
would
be a second
resolution explicitly authorising the use of force.
804.
The following
key findings are from Section 3.6:
•
Following
the adoption of resolution 1441, the UK was pursuing a strategy
of
coercive
diplomacy to secure the disarmament of Iraq. The hope was that
this
might be
achieved by peaceful means, but views differed on how likely
that
would
be.
•
The UK
Government remained convinced that Iraq had retained
prohibited
weapons and
was pursuing chemical, biological and ballistic
missile
programmes
in contravention of its obligations to disarm; and that the
absence
of evidence
of weapons and programmes was the result of a successful
policy
of concealment.
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