The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
The Council
decided (OP10) that “Iraq shall unconditionally undertake not to
use, develop,
construct
or acquire any of the items specified” in OPs 8 and 9.
Iraq was
invited (OP11) “to reaffirm unconditionally its obligations under
the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons of 1 July 1968”.
The Council
decided (OP12) that “Iraq shall unconditionally agree not to
acquire or
develop
nuclear weapons or nuclear-weapons-useable material, or any
sub-systems or
components
or any research, development, support or manufacturing facilities
related to”
nuclear
weapons.
The
resolution also made provision for on-site inspection, destruction
and removal of
prohibited
material and future monitoring and verification.
8.
Containment of
the threat from Iraq, and in particular its WMD capability, was
a
continuing
foreign policy concern throughout the 1990s and frequently required
active
consideration
of difficult and controversial issues, including significant
military action.
9.
The
difficulties encountered by UN inspectors in pursuing the remit in
resolution 687
and
subsequent UN resolutions, and the decision in December 1998 to
withdraw UN
inspectors
and to launch US and UK military action against Iraqi facilities,
Operation
Desert Fox,
are addressed in Section 1.1.
10.
In his
statement to Parliament following Operation Desert Fox,
Mr Blair said that the
objectives
were “clear and simple: to degrade the ability of Saddam Hussein to
build and
use weapons
of mass destruction”.1
11.
The impact of
Operation Desert Fox is addressed later in this
Section.
12.
A Joint
Memorandum produced by the Foreign and Defence Secretaries for
the
Defence and
Overseas Policy Committee (DOP) in May 1999 described policy
towards
Iraq as “in
the short term, to reduce the threat Saddam poses to the region,
including by
eliminating
his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programmes”.2
13.
A summary of
the evolution of the JIC Assessments of Iraq’s capabilities
between
1990 and
December 1998 is in Section 1.1. The Butler Report concluded that
it had
been “left
with four strong impressions” from its analysis of those
Assessments:
“•
… effective
– but not demonstrably complete – work carried out by the
IAEA
and UNSCOM
to supervise the dismantlement of Iraq’s nuclear,
biological
and
chemical weapons programmes, together with those missile
programmes
prohibited
under United Nations Security Council resolution 687.
•
… a
progressive reduction in JIC estimates of Iraq’s indigenous
capabilities in
the period
to 1994/95.
1
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 17
December 1998, column 1097.
2
Joint
Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs and the Secretary of
State for
Defence, 17 May 1999, ‘Iraq: Future Strategy’.
10