The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
On 23
September, SIS issued a second report from the same sourcing chain
as the
11 September
report. That stated VX, sarin and soman had been produced at
Al-Yarmuk,
and were
loaded into a variety of “containers”, including “linked hollow
glass spheres”.
The source
commented that there had been “accelerated production of CW
substances
at
Al-Yarmuk for several years”. It was described by SIS as expanding
and clarifying the
intelligence
in the first report, and that it was “valuable
intelligence”.218
The report
was circulated to the same restricted group as the report on 11
September,
with the
addition of Mr Mark Bowman, Mr Brown’s Private
Secretary.
It arrived
too late to have influenced the conclusions in the
dossier.
442.
When the
reporting was reissued in April 2003 Mr Scarlett was not
informed
that SIS
had doubts about the reliability of the reporting chain. That is
addressed
in Section 4.3.
443.
The potential
impact of the reporting on Mr Blair’s statement to the
House
of Commons
on 24 September is addressed later in this Section.
Mr Straw’s
speech to the UN General Assembly on 14 September focused on the
critical
role the UN
had to play in world affairs, and the “three rising challenges” of
failing states,
terrorism
and weapons of mass destruction.219
Addressing
the threat from proliferation, Mr Straw stated: “Nowhere is
the case for
universal
support for the enforcement of the UN’s law stronger than in the
field of weapons
of mass
destruction.” He added:
“… with one
infamous exception – no States have resorted to these, the world’s
worst
weapons.
“That
exception is Iraq. For two decades, Saddam has defied and
frustrated
every
attempt to enforce the international rule of law. Iraq is the only
country to
be
condemned by the United Nations for breaching the Convention on
Chemical
Weapons.
Iraq has fought two wars of aggression … No country has deceived
every
other
country in the world as systematically and cynically as Iraq. And
no country
presents as
fundamental a challenge to the United Nations …”
218
Report
[SIS], 23 September 2002, ‘Iraq Details of CW Production at Al
Yarmuk’.
219
FCO News,
14 September 2002, ‘Security
is not an option, it is a necessity - Straw
(14/09/02)’.
196