The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
•
The
Government was “anxious not to start making the claims until we
have
absolutely
bottomed out anything by way of information that comes to
us”.
156.
In response to
a suggestion that WMD had not been as big a threat as he
thought,
Mr Blair
pointed out that Iraq could have reconstituted concealed weapons
“had we all
left Iraq
and the weapons inspectors not being able to carry out their job”.
He added
that he
thought there would be “increasing evidence of links between the
previous Iraqi
regime and
terrorist organisations”.
157.
On
2 May, Mr Straw sent Mr Blair further thoughts on
what might be found
in Iraq.
Evidence might take the form of testimony or documents rather
than
materiel.
158.
On the role
of UNMOVIC and the IAEA, Mr Straw advised that it would
be
“odd” if
the Coalition refused to co-operate with the weapons inspectors
having
made that
the centrepiece of the case against Saddam Hussein.
159.
Mr Straw
wrote again to Mr Blair on 2 May reiterating his concerns
that the
plans for
handling the detection and elimination of Iraqi WMD “should not
become the
foundation
on which critics of our military action in Iraq” could “build a new
case to
160.
Mr Straw
welcomed the action being taken to impress on commanders in
Iraq
the
importance of the issue and that work was in hand to identify a
substantial UK
contribution
to the ISG. But the timeframe for ISG deployment highlighted the
need to
manage
expectations:
“This is
not a matter of suggesting that we may not, in the event, find any
evidence
of WMD
programmes. On the contrary, as you told the media on
28 April, we are
confident
that we will. But we must keep drumming home three
messages:
– we
already have substantial evidence: both from before the fighting
and
what we
have discovered since. There is 173 pages of evidence in
Blix’s
7 March
report. Examples since include the discoveries of large
stockpiles
of
protective suits and atropine: Coalition forces were well known not
to
possess
chemical weapons, so what reason would Iraq have had for
such
stockpiles
other than to protect its forces against its own chemical
weapons?
– this will
not be a quick process. Saddam has had twelve years to hide
the
evidence
and it is unreasonable to expect us to uncover it in a few
weeks.
We should
be stressing that the process of discovery and validation
cannot
be rushed:
we must be extremely thorough to minimise the risk of
false
alarms
…
– evidence
can take many forms. It may well not be in the form of
finished
materiel
(stockpiles of munitions, barrels of nerve agent etc); it is
equally if
79
Minute
Straw to Prime Minister, 2 May 2003, ‘Iraq: WMD Detection and
Elimination’.
456