The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

908. Sir Jeremy also wrote:

“… the UK was not specific in saying that a new decision would not be necessary.

Nor in fact was the United States. We left it that SCR 1441 would have to speak

for itself.

“The UK’s actual position was that the whole corpus of resolutions, from SCR 678

and 687 onwards, substantiated the case for the use of force against Iraq, through

the termination of the 1991 ceasefire, if Iraq was shown not to have complied

with relevant resolutions. In taking this position, we were using exactly the same

approach as in justifying the bombing of Iraq in December 1998, which up to this

time had never been contested on a legal basis by another Member State.”312

909. Sir Jeremy told the Inquiry that, in negotiating resolution 1441, the UK had:

“… had to scale Washington’s more unilateral ambitions back down to something

that was negotiable within the Security Council.”313

910. Subsequently, Sir Jeremy said: “it was an important objective of our diplomacy

that we should have as large a consensus in the Security Council as possible for those

reasons of legitimacy”.314

911. Sir Jeremy Greenstock told the Inquiry:

“We found language to express a consensus that meant that the inspectors

would normally be expected to declare whether or not Saddam Hussein was in

compliance, but there could also be a report from other sources that there was

non‑co‑operation or non‑compliance … Secondly, that if there was a report that

there was non‑compliance, the Security Council would meet to assess what that

meant, and that was the only requirement of the resolution. It was not expressly

stated in any operative paragraph of 1441 that the Security Council should meet and

decide what to do in the case of non‑compliance, and that was where the French

and the Americans met, that there should be a further stage of consideration but that

further stage of consideration should not necessarily mean that there would be a

further decision of the Security Council if force had to be used under the terms of the

whole corpus of resolutions up to that point.”315

912. Sir Jeremy added:

“It was my instructions that we should not concede … that it would be necessary

to have a specific decision of the Security Council before force was used under

the cover of the previous resolutions.”316

312 Statement, November 2009, page 11.

313 Public hearing, 15 December 2009, page 33.

314 Public hearing, 27 November 2009, page 39.

315 Public hearing, 27 November 2009, page 41.

316 Public hearing, 27 November 2009, page 47.

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