The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
18.
Mr Blair
said that those consequences would include Saddam Hussein
remaining
in power
in Iraq:
“A country
that in 1978, the year before he seized power, was richer than
Malaysia
or
Portugal. A country where today, 135 out of every 1,000 Iraqi
children die before
the age of
five – 70 percent of these deaths are from diarrhoea and
respiratory
infections
that are easily preventable. Where almost a third of children born
in the
centre and
south of Iraq have chronic malnutrition.
“Where 60
percent of the people depend on Food Aid.
“Where half
the population of rural areas have no safe water.
“Where
every year and now, as we speak, tens of thousands of political
prisoners
languish in
appalling conditions in Saddam’s jails and are routinely
executed.
“Where in
the past 15 years over 150,000 Shia Moslems in Southern Iraq
and
Moslem
Kurds in Northern Iraq have been butchered, with up to four million
Iraqis
in exile
round the world, including 350,000 now in Britain …
“If there
are 500,000 on that [Stop the War] march, that is still less than
the number
of people
whose deaths Saddam has been responsible for.
“If there
are one million, that is still less than the number of people who
died in the
wars he
started.”
The figure
for child mortality in Iraq under Saddam Hussein’s regime used by
Mr Blair in
his speech
to the Labour Party Spring Conference in February 2003, and in
subsequent
public
statements, has been questioned. The Inquiry therefore considered
the origin of
that
figure.
On 14
February, the day before Mr Blair’s speech, Ms Clare Short,
the International
Development
Secretary, wrote to Mr Blair setting out key humanitarian
issues in Iraq
(see
Section 6.5).11
Ms Short
advised that the humanitarian situation in the centre
and
the south
of Iraq, which was under Saddam Hussein’s control, was worse than
the
situation
in the north. To demonstrate that point, she attached statistics,
attributed to the
UN
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), on child and maternal mortality in Iraq.
Child mortality in
central and
southern Iraq was 135 per 1,000 (“worse than the Democratic
Republic of
Congo or
Mozambique”) compared with 72 per 1,000 in northern
Iraq.
On the same
day, No.10 asked the FCO for material on a number of issues in
preparation
for
Mr Blair’s speech to the Conference, including how many Iraqi
children under the age
of five
died each month.12
11 Letter
Short to Blair, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Humanitarian Planning and
the Role of the UN’.
12
Minute
Rycroft to Owen, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Prime Minister’s
Speech’.
174