4.3 |
Iraq WMD assessments, October 2002 to March 2003
“… our
judgement, the American judgement … is that Saddam has these
weapons,
but the
purpose of the inspectors … is … to report back to the UN and say
whether
he is fully
co-operating or he’s not.”
197.
Dr Blix
reported to the Security Council on 27 January that Iraq’s
declaration
of 7
December did not provide new evidence which would eliminate or
reduce the
unresolved
issues identified in 1999.
198.
As required in
resolution 1441, Dr Blix and Dr ElBaradei made their first reports
to
the
Security Council on 27 January (see Section 3.6).84
“One might
have expected … that Iraq might have tried to respond to, clarify
and
submit
supporting evidence regarding the many open disarmament issues,
which
the Iraqi
side should be familiar with from the UNSCOM document S/1999/94
of
January
1999 and the so-called Amorim Report of March 1999 … These are
the
questions
which UNMOVIC, governments and independent commentators
have
often
cited.”
200.
UNMOVIC had
found “the issues listed in those two documents as
unresolved,
professionally
justified”. The reports pointed to:
“… lack of
evidence and inconsistencies … which must be straightened out,
if
weapons
dossiers are to be closed … They deserve to be taken seriously by
Iraq
rather than
being brushed aside as evil machinations of UNSCOM.
Regrettably,
the …
declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does
not
seem to
contain any new evidence that would eliminate the questions or
reduce
their number.”
201.
Dr Blix set
out examples of questions and issues that needed to be addressed
in
some
detail, including:
•
UNMOVIC had
information indicating that Iraq had worked on
purifying
and
stabilising the nerve agent VX, and had achieved more than it
had
declared.
This conflicted with the Iraqi account that the agent had only
been
produced on
a pilot scale, which had been destroyed in 1991, and was
never
weaponised.
There were also questions to be answered about the fate of
VX
precursor chemicals.
•
Iraq had
provided a copy of the “Air Force” document it had withheld in
1998.
It
indicated that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air
Force
between
1983 and 1988. Iraq had claimed that 19,500 bombs were
consumed
84
UN Press
Release, 27 January 2003, Security
Council briefed by Chief UN Weapons Experts on First
60 days of
Inspections in Iraq (SC/7644).
329