The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
Mr Straw.206
Mr McKane
added that he had asked for material produced around the
time
of
Operation Desert Fox “in case” Mr Blair decided “a more
comprehensive treatment of
Saddam’s
human rights record going back to the 1980s” was
needed.
472.
Mr McKane
also asked the FCO to “produce an expanded version of the
paper
on Iraqi
Human Rights abuses to cover Saddam’s record from his accession in
1979,
stating
that the intention was “to produce a clear picture of Saddam’s
record of human
rights
abuses throughout his career”.207
473.
In relation to
the draft paper on Iraqi Regime Crimes and Human Rights
Abuses,
which also
drew on intelligence, the FCO would revise the paper, “including
boxes
to
highlight particularly vivid and detailed pieces which illustrated
the nature of the
474.
Junior
officials in the FCO questioned whether the draft WMD paper
would
be
sufficient to underpin an argument that WMD posed such a threat
that action
should be
taken to deliver Iraq’s disarmament and offered suggestions to
improve
its
impact.
475.
Mr Mark
Matthews, a junior official in the FCO News Department, was
critical of
the style
of the draft WMD paper and:
“… the
repeated efforts of the authors to emphasise what they do not know
as well
as what
they know. In some cases this is necessary for the sake of
accuracy. In
others it
is unnecessary and unhelpful.”209
476.
After offering
detailed comments, Mr Matthews added:
“It is
important that, where unnecessary and unhelpful, these expressions
of
the
authors’ uncertainty are removed. Otherwise we risk undermining
further
a paper which
already looks a little thinner than earlier versions of
evidence
of Iraqi wrongdoing.”
477.
Mr Matthews
also provided a “revised version of the general briefing
paper”,
including a
draft Introduction by the Foreign Secretary. The document shows
that the
briefing
paper would set out the wider context of policy on Iraq and would
be issued by
the FCO.
The detailed papers on Iraq’s WMD and Saddam’s human rights abuses
being
prepared
under the auspices of the inter-departmental group would be
published as
Annexes to
that paper.
206
Minute
McKane to Rycroft, 27 March 2002, ‘Saddam’s Record of Human Rights
Abuses’.
207
Letter
McKane to Tanfield, 9 April 2002, ‘Iraq’.
208
Letter
McKane to Tanfield, 12 April 2002, ‘Iraq’.
209
Email
Matthews to Tanfield, 15 April 2002, ‘Iraq Dossier’ attaching Paper
FCO, [undated],
‘British Government
Briefing Paper on Iraq’.
98