The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
Office and
other FCO addressees on 13 March.197
It was
agreed with the MOD, Defence
Intelligence
Staff (DIS) and the Cabinet Office Assessments Staff.
591.
The paper was
referred to in a note on the Attorney General’s file, in relation
to
the need
for “further material to be assembled” as discussed by Lord
Goldsmith and
Mr Straw,
in their meeting late on 13 March, to provide “evidence showing”
that Iraq was
“in further
material breach”. That listed a need for:
“•
Any
examples of false statements/omissions and (significant)
non-co-operation
reported to
Security Council pursuant to OP4 of SCR 1441.
•
Any
examples of Iraqi interference reported by Blix or ElBaradei to the
Council
pursuant to
OP11.
•
For these
purposes, we need to trawl through statements from the
draft
Command
Paper on Iraqi non-compliance which is to be
published.
•
See
attached FCO paper Iraqi non-compliance with UNSCR 1441
of
592.
A note of a
conversation with Ms Kara Owen in Mr Straw’s Private
Office,
on 14
March, recorded that Mr Brummell had made the following points
on Lord
Goldsmith’s behalf:
•
“Demonstration
of breaches of UNSCR 1441 are critical to our legal
case.
Therefore
we must be scrupulously careful to ensure that the best
examples
of non-compliance
are referred to.”
•
“It would
be distinctly unhelpful to our legal case if the examples of
non
compliance
… were weak or inadequate; and it would be difficult – indeed
it
would be
too late – to seek to add further (better) examples ‘after the
event’.”
•
The FCO
needed to check the document they were preparing “very
carefully”
and subject
it to “the tightest scrutiny”.
•
The
document should include “a caveat … acknowledging that the
examples
of non-compliance
… were not exhaustive but illustrative”.
•
The
submission to Mr Straw should reflect those
points.199
593.
Mr Brummell’s
record of his conversation with Ms Owen on 14 March
also
stated that
he had been informed that the FCO paper would be sent out with a
letter
from
Mr Blair to Ministerial colleagues on 17 March, “after
Cabinet”. Mr Blair’s letter
would also
contain a “one page” summary of the legal position, which was
“news”
to Mr Brummell.
A subsequent conversation with Mr Rycroft had “confirmed that
it
would be
helpful if” Lord Goldsmith’s staff would draft that
summary.
197
Minute [FCO
junior official] NPD to PS [FCO], 13 March 2003, ‘Iraq: Compliance
with UNSCR 1441’.
198
Note [on
Attorney General’s files], [undated], ‘Iraq Further Material to be
Assembled (as discussed by
the
Attorney General and Foreign Secretary on 13 March
2003)’.
199
Note
Brummell, 14 March 2003, ‘Iraqi Non-Compliance with UNSCR 1441:
Note of Telephone
Conversation
with Kara Owen’.
500