The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
“One might
have expected … that Iraq might have tried to respond to, clarify
and
submit
supporting evidence regarding the many open disarmament issues,
which
the Iraqi
side should be familiar with from the UNSCOM document S/1999/94
of
January
1999 and the so‑called Amorim Report of March 1999 … These are
the
questions
which UNMOVIC, governments and independent commentators
have
often
cited.”
709.
UNMOVIC had
found “the issues listed in those two documents as
unresolved,
professionally
justified”. The reports pointed to:
“… lack of
evidence and inconsistencies … which must be straightened out,
if
weapons
dossiers are to be closed … They deserve to be taken seriously by
Iraq
rather than
being brushed aside as evil machinations of UNSCOM.
Regrettably,
the …
declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does
not
seem to
contain any new evidence that would eliminate the questions or
reduce
their number.”
710.
Dr Blix
set out examples of questions and issues that needed to be
addressed
in some
detail, including:
•
UNMOVIC had
information indicating that Iraq had worked on purifying
and
stabilising
the nerve agent VX, and had achieved more than it had
declared.
This
conflicted with the Iraqi account that the agent had only been
produced
on a
pilot scale, had been destroyed in 1991, and was never weaponised.
There
were also
questions to be answered about the fate of VX precursor
chemicals.
•
Iraq had
provided a copy of the “Air Force” document it had withheld in
1998.
It
indicated that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air
Force
between
1983 and 1988. Iraq had claimed that 19,500 bombs were
consumed
during that
period. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, UNMOVIC
“must
assume
these quantities are now unaccounted for”.
•
The
discovery of “a number of 122mm chemical rocket warheads in a
bunker at
a storage
depot southwest of Baghdad”. The bunker was relatively new,
which
meant “the
rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a
time
when Iraq
should not have had such munitions”. Iraq had stated that they
were
“overlooked
from 1991 from a batch of 2,000 that were stored there during
the
Gulf War.
That could be the case. They could also be the tip of a
submerged
iceberg.
The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve, but rather points
to,
the issue
of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted
for.”
Iraq had
subsequently found four more chemical rockets at a storage depot
in
al‑Taji.
The warheads were “empty”.
•
Inspectors
had found “a laboratory quantity of thiodiglycal, a
mustard
gas precursor”.
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