The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
224.
The document
which Mr Williams produced was released by the FCO in
February
2008 in
response to a Freedom of Information request.105
225.
Mr Williams
told the Inquiry:
“Some
journalists have detected similarity between the shape of my effort
and the
finished
product, but it would have been surprising if an organisation which
had never
produced a
public document [had] not taken some pointers from a
professional.”106
226.
Following
Mr Campbell’s meeting on 5 September, four drafts of the
dossier
were
prepared and circulated for comment to JIC members and other
officials in the
FCO, the
MOD, the Cabinet Office and the Intelligence Agencies, on 10, 16,
19 and
20 September.
Each is addressed later in this Section.
227.
In a press
conference before the discussions at Camp David Mr Blair
stated
that Iraq
had to be dealt with. The purpose of the meeting with President
Bush
was to work
out the strategy.
228.
Mr Blair’s
meeting with President Bush at Camp David on 7 September,
and
the press
conference which preceded the meeting, are addressed in Section
3.4.
229.
In the press
conference, Mr Blair stated:
“The point
I would emphasise … is the threat from Saddam Hussein and
weapons
of mass
destruction, chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons
capability,
that threat
is real. We only need to look at the report from the
International
Atomic
[Energy] Agency this morning107
showing
what has been going on at the
former
nuclear site to realise that. And the policy of inaction is not a
policy we can
responsibly
subscribe to. So the purpose of our discussion today is to work out
the
right
strategy for dealing with this, because deal with it we
must.”108
230.
In response to
a question, Mr Blair emphasised concern about Iraq’s
attempts
to develop
nuclear weapons and the importance of the IAEA report he had
mentioned
which
showed there was “a real issue that has to be tackled here”. He
stated that, on the
way to Camp
David, he had been reading “the catalogue of attempts by Iraq to
conceal
its weapons
of mass destruction, not to tell the truth … over a period of
years”.
105
Paper,
[undated], [John William’s re-draft].
106
Statement,
December 2010, paragraph 18.
107
The IAEA
issued a press release (IAEA Press Release 2002/11) on 6 September
2002 stating: “With
reference
to an article published today in the New York Times, the
International Atomic Energy Agency
would like
to state that it has no new information on Iraq’s nuclear weapons
programme since 1998 when
its
inspectors left Iraq. Only through a resumption of inspection … can
the Agency draw any conclusion
with regard
to Iraq’s compliance with its obligations … relating to its nuclear
activities.”
108
The White
House, 7 September 2002, President
Bush, Prime Minister Blair Discuss Keeping
the Peace.
154