3.5 |
Development of UK strategy and options, September to November 2002
–
the
negotiation of resolution 1441
•
Iraq will
use all diplomatic efforts, backed by its economic leverage on
its
neighbours,
to undermine political support for a continuation of the
inspections
413.
Details of the
Assessment are set out in the Box below.
The
Assessment stated that Saddam Hussein’s decision to agree to the
return of weapons
inspectors
on 16 September appeared “to have been driven by a serious wish to
avoid a
new, strong
UN Security Council resolution”.
Overall
strategy
Intelligence
indicated that Saddam Hussein was “determined to retain Iraq’s
weapons of
mass
destruction”, which he considered “to be a key part of Iraq’s
regional political and
military
power. He was “adamant that UN weapons inspectors should not be
allowed to
find and
destroy the WMD capability that Iraq has been able to develop
further in the four
years since
UNSCOM left in 1998”.
Iraq was
“confident” that it could “ensure the inspectors, acting under the
terms of existing
UNSCRs”,
would “not be able to find anything when they return and that Iraq
will retain its
proscribed
weapons programmes”.
Iraq’s
tactics would be:
“… guided
principally by the need to avoid military action which would
threaten
Saddam’s
regime. Whilst there is a credible military threat, Iraq is likely
to co‑operate
with the
inspectors and present them with sanitised sites, the result of a
programme
of
concealment and deception. This will be backed by a political
effort to focus
the
inspection issue on as narrow a programme as possible (in scope,
geography
and time).
Iraq will continue to pursue a ‘comprehensive solution’ and argue
for
unwarranted
interim ‘rewards’, such as softening of sanctions or the No‑Fly
Zones
for early
reasonable behaviour.”
The JIC
judged that:
“Iraq’s
obstruction may initially be limited, for fear of provoking early
US military
action, but
that Saddam will incrementally test the extent to which the
international
community
retains the political will to enforce Iraqi disarmament. […] Iraq’s
Deputy
Prime
Minister Tariq Aziz is confident that it will be easier to delay
the inspectors once
they arrive
in Iraq.”
Practical
arrangements for the return of the inspectors
Under the
provisions of resolution 1284 (1999), UNMOVIC would submit a
work
programme
for UN approval 60 days after inspections began. It would then have
120 days
after being
able to establish monitoring and verification to confirm
co‑operation by Iraq:
“Possibly
by the end of July/Sept[ember] 2003”.
143
JIC
Assessment, 11 October 2002, ‘Iraq: The Return of UN
Inspectors’.
273