The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
•
The
September dossier had stated that Saddam Hussein would engage in
a
programme
of concealment and he (Mr Blair) believed, from the
information now
available,
that was “precisely what he did”.
•
He
reiterated the validity of the intelligence in relation to the
statement that Iraq
had
chemical and biological weapons that could be activated within 45
minutes.
•
He
suggested that the alternative hypothesis to the one he had set out
was that
Saddam
Hussein had decided to get rid of the weapons but had not told
anyone;
he did not
think that was “a very serious hypothesis”.
•
He
regretted that the dossier that had been produced in February had
not
correctly
attributed the information which had been drawn from
published
sources;
but that information was correct. The first and third parts of the
dossier
were based
on intelligence information.
•
The
information in the September dossier on Iraqi attempts to procure
uranium
from Niger
was not based on the “so-called ‘forged’ documents” seen by
the
IAEA, but
on separate intelligence.
•
The ISG
should be allowed time to do its work. It would be addressing the
issues
“in a
systematic way”, which Dr Blix “was unable to do”. “[C]hasing round
trying
to find the
stuff” was “always going to be incredibly difficult”. The only way
to “get
to the
truth” was “by interviewing the people involved”.
393.
On
15 July, the House of Commons rejected a second Opposition
motion
calling for
an independent judge-led inquiry into pre-conflict
intelligence.
394.
In the House
of Commons on 15 July, Mr Menzies Campbell asked
Mr Straw:
“… does not
the absence of chemical and biological weapons, the
embarrassing
and
apparently escalating dispute between Washington and London over
Niger,
the failure
to find SCUD missiles and the controversy over the February
dossier
make an
irresistible case for an inquiry independent of Parliament and led
by a
395.
Mr Straw
replied that “the combination of the Foreign Affairs Committee and
the
Intelligence
and Security Committee is appropriate”.195
396.
An Opposition
motion tabled in the House of Commons on 16 July by
Mr Ancram
stated:
“That this
House welcomes the Ninth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee
…
but notes
some reservations by Committee members that it not only had
insufficient
time but
insufficient access to crucial documents to come to comprehensive
and
194
House of
Commons, Official
Report,
15 July 2003, column 158.
195
House of
Commons, Official
Report,
15 July 2003, column 159.
500