The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
446.
Asked if he
had been disappointed by Dr Blix’s report of 14
February,
Mr Blair replied:
“It wasn’t
that I was disappointed. I was getting confused as to what he
was
really
trying to tell us … what particularly struck me … and this then had
a huge
significance
in what I then tried … to construct a final way of avoiding the
war, is,
on page
26 of his briefing, he deals with the issue of interviews and he
says that
the Iraqi
side … are starting to move on interviews … they have made a
commitment
that they
will allow it, but then, when he actually comes to the interviews
themselves,
people are
reluctant …”115
447.
Mr Blair
used his speech to the Labour Party conference on 15 February
to
continue to
link the timetable for decisions on Iraq to a judgement about
whether
Iraq had
decided to co-operate as required by resolution 1441.
448.
Mr Blair
also continued to emphasise the moral case for
removing
Saddam Hussein.
449.
On 15
February, as part of a weekend of worldwide protests against
military action
in Iraq, a
march organised by the Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for
Nuclear
Disarmament
and the Muslim Association of Britain took place in London. The
police
described
it as the UK’s biggest ever demonstration, estimating that at least
750,000
people took
part. The organisers put the figure closer to two million. There
were also
anti-war
gatherings in Glasgow and Belfast.116
450.
In the entry
in his diaries for 13 February, Mr Campbell wrote that
Mr Blair had
decided to
focus on a humanitarian theme to “at least give the marchers
something
to think
about and something to put them on the defensive”.117
451.
Mr Campbell
wrote the following day that Mr Blair had said Dr Blix’s
presentation
was “a
total disgrace, that he should have just told the truth, and the
truth was Saddam
was not
co-operating”. Mr Blair was in “a tough place”, but “showed no
signs of changing
tack … said
we were doing the right thing. But whether we liked it or not, we
were
moving
towards a regime change argument.” Mr Blair “felt we had to
make more of the
moral case
but we agreed we could not really set out the forward plan he had
devised
on the back
of this, because it would look like weakness …”
115
Public
hearing, 29 January 2010, pages 110-111.
116
BBC
News, 16
February 2003, “Million”
march against Iraq war.
117
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to
Iraq. Hutchinson,
2012.
260