3.6 |
Development of UK strategy and options, November 2002 to January
2003
substance.
There were open questions which had not been answered with
evidence.
Iraq had
missed an opportunity in its declaration, but could still provide
information.
350.
Mr Campbell
recorded that Mr Blair was “worried about Blix’s comments
that
we had
not been helping enough with the intelligence”.122
351.
Mr William
Ehrman, FCO Director General Defence and Intelligence,
advised
Mr Straw’s
Private Secretary on 19 December that the UK was passing
intelligence
to UNMOVIC
but “We had not found a silver bullet yet.”123
352.
Mr Straw
issued a statement which said that the declaration failed to
meet
Iraq’s
obligations and that there could not, therefore, be any confidence
in Iraq’s
claims that
it had no WMD.
353.
In a statement
issued after the reports to the Security Council, Mr Straw
said that
they
showed:
“… clearly
that Iraq has failed to meet the obligations imposed on it by
Security
Council
resolution 1441, which requires them to make a full and complete
disclosure
of their
weapons of mass destruction … as Dr Blix has said, this means
that we
cannot have
confidence … to put it very mildly – that Iraq has no weapons
of
mass
destruction as it has claimed. This now means that Iraq faces even
greater
responsibilities
to comply fully with the inspectors and co‑operate fully with
the
United
Nations if military action is to be avoided. This disclosure does
not of itself
trigger
military action … but it is a very serious failure to comply, and a
clear warning
has to go
out to Iraq that they now have to co‑operate fully with the United
Nations
and its
inspectors as is required of them by international
law.”124
354.
Secretary
Powell warned that Iraq was “well on its way to losing its
last
chance”,
and that there was a “practical limit” to how long the inspectors
could
be given to
complete their work.
355.
Secretary
Powell gave a press conference on 19 December stating that the
Iraqi
declaration
did not address Iraq’s stockpiles or supplies of chemical and
biological
agents and
the procurement and use of high‑strength aluminium tubes that can
be used
in a
nuclear weapons programme: “Most brazenly of all, the Iraqi
declaration denies
the
existence of any prohibited weapons programs at
all.”125
There was a
“pattern of
systematic
holes and gaps”. The US was “disappointed, but … not deceived … On
the
122
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to
Iraq. Hutchinson,
2012.
123
Minute
Ehrman to Private Secretary [FCO], 19 December 2002, ‘Iraq: Passing
Intelligence to
UNMOVIC’.
124
The
National Archives, 19 December 2002, Jack
Straw’s Statement on Iraq after Weapons
Inspectors’ report.
125
US
Department of State Press Release, Press
Conference Secretary of State Colin L Powell,
Washington, 19
December 2002.
65