3.8 |
Development of UK strategy and options, 8 to 20 March
2003
Dr Mohamed
ElBaradei, the Director General of the IAEA, and the provisions of
the
revised
draft resolution, tabled by the UK, US and Spain on 7 March, giving
the Iraqi
regime a
deadline by which it was required to demonstrate that it was
prepared to
70.
Mr Straw
emphasised that resolution 1441, giving “Iraq a ‘final opportunity’
to
comply with
a series of disarmament obligations” had been adopted four
months
previously;
and that, during the debate in the Security Council:
“… not a
single speaker claimed that Iraq was in compliance with those
obligations;
neither did
a single speaker deny that Iraq has been in flagrant breach
of
international
law for the past 12 years.”
71.
Mr Straw
welcomed Dr ElBaradei’s report that “the IAEA had found no
evidence
or plausible
indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in
Iraq”.
72.
Dr Blix,
“on the other hand”, had “reported movement in some limited areas:
for
example the
partial destruction of prohibited Al Samoud missiles”. But that was
“only
the tip of
the iceberg of Iraq’s illegal weapons programme”, and the “full
extent of the
iceberg was
revealed” in an UNMOVIC document, Unresolved
Disarmament Issues:
Iraq’s
Proscribed weapons Programmes, which had
now been made public.25
Mr Straw
described
the document as setting out, in “173 pages of painstaking detail,
the terrible
nature of
the weapons Saddam has sought with such determination to
develop”.
It was “a
catalogue of evasion, deceit and feigning co-operation while in
reality pursuing
concealment”.
The “sheer scale of Iraq’s efforts to develop and hide” its weapons
could
“be grasped
only by reading the whole document”.
73.
Citing the
potential impact of “tiny amounts” of anthrax, Mr Straw stated
that:
“Contrary
to Iraqi assertions”, the inspectors found evidence of anthrax
where Iraq
had
declared there was none. There was “a strong presumption that some
10,000
litres of
anthrax” had not been destroyed and “may still exist”, and Iraq
possessed “the
technology
and materials to allow it to return swiftly to the pre-1991
production levels”.
74.
Addressing the
suggestions that inspections should be given more time,
and
specifically
the memorandum produced by France, Germany and Russia on 5
March,
Mr Straw
said that Saddam Hussein was “a master at playing for time” and
that
continuing
inspections “with no firm end date” would “not achieve the
disarmament
required by
the Security Council”.
24
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 10 March
2003, columns 21-39.
25
UNMOVIC
Working Document, 6 March 2003, Unresolved
Disarmament Issues: Iraq’s Proscribed
Weapons
Programmes.
413