3.7 |
Development of UK strategy and options, 1 February to 7 March
2003
•
Dr John
Reid, Minister without Portfolio and Labour Party Chair, “said he
was
troubled
about the lack of domestic consensus, that there was a sense of
people
losing
their moral compass about the nature of the Iraqi
regime”.
•
Ms Tessa
Jowell, the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, “didn’t know
anyone
under
twenty five who supported action and we had to do better at
countering
110.
Following
Cabinet, Mr Blair asked Mr John Scarlett, Chairman of the
Joint
Intelligence
Committee (JIC), “to provide a confidential and intelligence based
briefing
on Iraq for
small groups of Ministers attending Cabinet”. The briefing would
“take as its
starting
point Part 1 of the Government’s dossier published last September”
and cover:
•
the “latest
assessment of Iraq’s holding of weapons of mass
destruction”;
•
the Iraqi
response to resolution 1441;
•
“recent
developments in Iraq and our current assessment of the
cohesion
of the regime”;
•
“Iraq and
terrorism”.28
Four
“briefing sessions” were offered the following week.
111.
The content of
those briefings is addressed in Section 4.3.
112.
In meetings
on 6 February, Mr Blair told Dr Blix and
Dr ElBaradei that he
doubted
Saddam Hussein would co-operate. He argued that a second
resolution
would
provide a basis for mobilising the international community to
persuade
Saddam
Hussein to leave. A tough line was the best way to avoid
conflict.
113.
Mr Straw
told Dr ElBaradei that Saddam Hussein would choose exile
only
if he
thought it was his last chance of survival.
114.
Dr Blix
stated that UNMOVIC’s next quarterly report, due on 1 March,
would
identify
“clusters” of issues that could be used to pose sharp questions for
Iraq,
possibly as
part of an ultimatum.
115.
Dr Blix
reminded Mr Blair that the material described as “unaccounted
for”
in UNSCOM’s
report of 1999 was not necessarily present in Iraq; and that it
would
be
“paradoxical to go to war for something that might turn out to be
very little”.
116.
Dr Blix
told Mr Straw he thought Iraq had prohibited programmes,
and
it “definitely
possessed the ability to jump-start BW programmes”.
27
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to Iraq.
Hutchinson,
2012.
28
Minute
PS/Chairman JIC to Prout, 7 February 2003, ‘Intelligence Briefing
on Iraq’.
199