The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
engineer
who supervised one of these facilities”, who had defected and was
hiding in
another
country. He added:
•
The
existence of transportable facilities moving on trailers had been
“confirmed
by a second
source, an Iraqi civil engineer in a position to know the details
of
the program”.
•
“A third
source, also in position to know, reported in summer 2002 that Iraq
had
manufactured
mobile production systems mounted on road trailer units and
on
rail
cars.”
•
A fourth
source, “an Iraqi major, who defected, confirmed that Iraq has
mobile
biological
research laboratories”.
266.
Secretary
Powell provided diagrams of the reported facilities and stated: “We
know
that Iraq
has at least seven of these mobile biological agent
factories.”
267.
During his
presentation Secretary Powell also drew attention “to the fine
paper
that the
United Kingdom distributed yesterday which describes in exquisite
detail Iraqi
deception
activities”.
268.
Secretary
Powell was referring to the No.10 document, ‘Iraq – Its
Infrastructure of
Concealment,
Deception and Intimidation’.
269.
In his
statement to the Security Council, Mr Straw described
Secretary Powell’s
presentation
as “a most powerful and authoritative case against the Iraqi
regime” and
thanked him
for “laying bare the deceit practised by the regime of Saddam
Hussein, and
worse, the
very great danger which that regime represents”.
270.
Mr Mohammed
Aldouri, Iraqi Permanent Representative to the UN, challenged
the
“incorrect
allegations” in Secretary Powell’s statement and reiterated that
Iraq had no
weapons of
mass destruction. He stated that inspectors had visited the sites
identified
in US and
UK reports in September and October and “none of the allegations”
was true.
He also
rebutted statements made by President Bush in his State of the
Union address
on 28
January.
271.
Mr Aldouri
reaffirmed Iraq’s commitment to pro-active co-operation with
the
inspectors
so that they could verify that Iraq was free of weapons of mass
destruction,
sanctions
could be lifted, and progress could be made on regional security by
ridding the
whole
Middle East of WMD.
272.
Dr Blix
reminded Mr Blair that the material described as “unaccounted
for” in
UNSCOM’s
report of 1999 was not necessarily present in Iraq; and that it
would be
“paradoxical
to go to war for something that might turn out to be very
little”.
273.
Dr Blix
told Mr Straw he thought Iraq had prohibited programmes, and
it
“definitely
possessed the ability to jump-start BW programmes”.
344