1.2 |
Development of UK strategy and options, September 2000 to September
2001
concerns
were “exacerbated and reinforced by Iraqi prevarication,
concealment and
deception”.
The Butler Review detected “signs that this context led to the JIC
making
its
estimates of Iraqi capabilities on an over-cautious or worst case
basis (not always
declared as
such)”.
8.
The Butler
Report concluded that the JIC Assessments would have left
the
impression
in the minds of readers “of suspicion and concern about Iraq’s
break-
out
capability” coupled with “possible possession” of chemical and
biological agent
stockpiles
in breach of Iraq’s obligations and “concern about the ability of
Iraq to
regenerate
a small number of ballistic missiles”.
9.
The UK’s
assessment of Iraq’s continued possession of weapons of mass
destruction
(WMD) in
defiance of the obligations imposed by the UN is set out in
Sections 4.1 to 4.3.
Those
Sections also address the UK’s wider concerns about proliferation.
The Butler
Report is
addressed in Section 4.4.
10.
The framework
in which the UK, and other states, viewed Iraq in 2000
was
determined
by their experience since 1990. That conditioned their positions
and
behaviour
and provided the background to the UK review of policy in autumn
2000,
which is
the starting point of the Inquiry’s considerations.
In his
statement for the Inquiry, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK Permanent
Representative
to the UN
in New York from July 1998 to July 2003, wrote:
“In 2000,
little new work was done on Iraq, with the Security Council
largely
exhausted
with the subject … Sanctions continued, but the [sanctions]
regime
remained
vulnerable to Iraqi non-co-operation and deceit and the feeling
that
sanctions
were gradually unravelling increasingly took hold
internationally.”2
A number of
reasons for the erosion of sanctions were offered to the Inquiry,
including the
lack of
consensus within the Security Council, the loss of international
public support and
a decline
in the willingness of many nations to enforce
sanctions.
Sir Jeremy
told the Inquiry:
“Of all the
issues that I dealt with in the Security Council, Iraq produced the
greatest
divisions
among the Permanent Five3…
…
“The United
States was at one end of the spectrum in regarding Iraq as a threat
and
as
regarding the United Nations as unable to deal with the threat in a
way which was
required.
2
Statement,
20 November 2009, page 2.
3
The five
Permanent Members of the UN Security Council – China, France,
Russia, the UK and the US.
189