The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
would play
around, but I always thought it was possible that he would realise
that this
was the
moment of choice”.303
899.
In the context
of advice from officials in the 19 July Cabinet Office paper,
‘Iraq:
Conditions
for Military Action’, that the inspectors would “need at least six
months”,
Mr Blair
added:
“For me it
was never a matter of time but a matter of attitude. You could have
given
him [Saddam
Hussein] longer than six months if he was co‑operating but if he
was
not it
wouldn’t really matter … I do not accept that if Blix had carried
on doing his
inspections
we would have found out the truth.”304
900.
In his first
statement for the Inquiry, Mr Straw wrote that the UK
objective was
to secure
agreement to:
“… a robust
text which provided terms for the readmission of inspectors to
Iraq,
and their
unfettered operation, which was tough but not so tough that the
Saddam
Hussein
regime could plausibly reject them altogether.”305
901.
Asked whether
the purpose of 1441 was to ensure the return of the
weapons
inspectors
to Iraq, or to create the conditions necessary to justify military
action,
Mr Straw
replied:
“The
purpose of 1441 was as it stated. It was to secure compliance by
Saddam
Hussein
with the obligations imposed on him by the Security Council. As I
have
said
probably to the point of tedium, had Saddam complied with the
resolution, he
would have
stayed in post. At the very minimum it would have been impossible
for
any British
Government to have taken part in any military action, but I don’t
believe
military
action would have taken place, because the casus belli would
have gone …
It was not
there as an excuse for military action. Certainly not …
sometimes
diplomacy
has to be backed by the threat and, if necessary, the use of force
… It
was, to use
the jargon, based on the idea of coercive diplomacy, but its
purpose was
to secure
compliance, essentially the disarmament of Iraq, and that’s what we
set
902.
In his memoir,
Mr Straw wrote:
“The
resolution provided the best hope there was of resolving the crisis
through
peaceful
means. The obligations that it imposed on the Iraqi government were
easy
to meet.
Iraq had to make a full declaration of all its WMD programmes, and
allow
the IAEA
and UNMOVIC inspectors unrestricted access. I often said that ‘we
would
take yes
for an answer’. There would have been no possibility whatever of
war if the
303
Public
hearing, 21 January 2011, page 76.
304
Public
hearing, 21 January 2011, page 77.
305
Statement,
January 2010, page 9.
306
Public
hearing, 2 February 2011, pages 59‑60.
360