4.4 | The
search for WMD
65.
The points
which the MOD suggested Mr Blair might make to President
Bush
included:
•
“Detection
and elimination of WMD … now becoming our top political
priority.
Need to
build on current efforts and demonstrate that our casus belli
has
substance.”
•
Coalition
commanders “should give high priority to identifying and
detaining”
Iraqi
scientists and other staff with information about Iraq’s
activities.
•
Support for
an ISG and the hope that it could deploy “as soon as
possible”.
•
“Independent
verification of US/UK WMD finds would be extremely
useful
politically,
although clearly a complicating factor.”
•
The UK’s
“ultimate objective” was UN involvement, but it recognised “that
[the]
US had
reservations”.
66.
Sir David
Manning showed Mr Blair the advice from Mr Howard to
Mr Hoon,
including
the draft letter from Mr Hoon to Sir David, which differed
little from the version
that was
sent. Sir David commented:
“We need a
coherent plan for Iraqi WMD. This is work in progress … We
need
to inject
greater urgency; and I am not yet convinced that we need do
everything
as part of
one large US-led organisation. Finding people [involved in Iraq’s
WMD
programmes]
is key. That doesn’t depend on CENTCOM [Central
Command].”29
67.
In an
interview for the Spanish newspaper El
País, published on
9 April,
Dr Hans
Blix, the Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, made a number of points
about
the role
of UNMOVIC and the events preceding military action in
Iraq.30
Those
included:
•
The US and
UK had told UNMOVIC that Iraq possessed weapons of
mass
destruction.
UNMOVIC never accepted that statement as an established
fact;
its job
was to establish the facts.
•
UNMOVIC had
visited sites identified by the US and UK and found “nothing
that
had to do
with weapons of mass destruction”.
•
The US
intelligence services had provided information to the IAEA
about
“contracts
for a presumed purchase of enriched uranium from Niger” which
were
a “crude
lie” (see Box, ‘Uranium and Niger’, later in this
Section).
•
After his
report to the Security Council on 27 January criticising Iraq
it had
begun to
co-operate and provide “significant data”, including the names of
many
technicians
and scientists who had participated in the development of
biological
and
chemical weapons in 1991. UNMOVIC “needed some months to work on
it”.
•
The US had
welcomed his report on 27 January, but the “great paradox” was
that
from then
on Iraq began to co-operate and the US began to criticise him (Dr
Blix).
29
Manuscript
comment Manning to Prime Minister, 12 April 2003, on Minute
Gibbons to Manning,
11 April
2003, ‘WMD Detection and Elimination’.
30
Global
Policy Forum, 9 April 2003, Interview
With Hans Blix: By Ernesto Ekaizer, El Pais.
437