3.6 |
Development of UK strategy and options, November 2002 to January
2003
339.
Dr Blix
reported on the speed of UNMOVIC’s build‑up of operations in Iraq
and
that it had
inspected 44 sites, including eight newly declared
locations.118
Access to
the
sites,
including those previously designated by Iraq as sensitive or
Presidential, had
been
“prompt”, and assistance had been “expeditious”. The location of
artillery shells
and
containers with mustard gas, which had been placed under UNSCOM
supervision
in 1998,
had been identified and they would be sampled and eventually
destroyed.
Dr Blix
reported that Iraq had formally been asked to submit the names of
all personnel
currently
or formerly associated with some aspect of Iraq’s programme of
weapons
of mass
destruction and ballistic missiles by the end of the year; and for
legislation
implementing
resolutions, notably laws prohibiting engagement in the
development,
production
or storage of proscribed material.
340.
In his
“necessarily provisional” comments on the declaration, Dr Blix
stated that
Iraq
continued to state that there were no weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq when
the
inspectors left in December 1998 and that none had “been designed,
procured,
produced or
stored in the period since then”. While individual Governments had
stated
that they
had “convincing evidence to the contrary”, UNMOVIC was, at that
point,
“neither in
a position to confirm Iraq’s statements, nor in possession of
evidence to
disprove
it”.
341.
During the
period between 1991 and 1998, Iraq had submitted many
declarations
which had
“proved inaccurate or incomplete or was unsupported or contradicted
by
evidence”.
The statements by Iraq were not sufficient to create confidence
that no
weapons
programmes and proscribed items remained: the statements needed to
be
“supported
by documentation or other evidence” which would allow them to be
verified.
342.
The overall
impression was that “not much new significant
information”
had
been provided which related to proscribed programmes; nor had
“much new
supporting documentation
or other evidence been submitted”. Iraq had provided
new information
on:
•
missile
activities, including a series of new projects at various stages
of
development,
which Iraq claimed were permitted;
•
a
short‑range rocket manufactured using 81mm aluminium tubes;
and
•
the “Air
Force” document119
relating to
the consumption of chemical weapons
in the
Iran-Iraq war.
New
material had been provided “concerning non‑weapons related
activities”.
118
UN Security
Council, 19 December 2002, ‘Notes for briefing the Security Council
regarding inspections
in Iraq and
a preliminary assessment of Iraq’s declaration under paragraph 3 of
resolution 1441 (2002) –
Hans Blix,
Executive Chairman UNMOVIC’.
A119
document
found by an UNSCOM inspector in a safe in Iraqi Air Force
headquarters in 1998. It gave
an account
of the expenditure of bombs, including chemical bombs, by Iraq in
the Iran‑Iraq war which
raised
questions about Iraq’s previous accounts. Iraq had taken the
document from the inspector.
63