The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
Iraq tried
to procure missiles from North Korea with a range of
1,300km.
And Iraq
was continuing to develop Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with
ranges
over 500km.
“Even in
the area of CW, where the ISG have not yet found the
unaccounted
for … and
other material, there is emerging evidence of Iraqi attempts to
restart
production,
and many leads for the ISG to follow up.
“All of
these are breaches of UNSCRs. Any one of them, had it been known at
the
time, would
surely have triggered a report back to the UN Security Council and
an
explicit
authorisation from the UNSC for the use of military force following
UNSCR
1441.
“Yet this
is just the tip of the iceberg:
•
This is
just an interim report …
•
The ISG’s
working environment has been very difficult … Some WMD
personnel
left Iraq during the conflict.
•
Above all,
there is now clear evidence of a pattern of deliberate
deception
and
concealment, probably centrally organised … Scientists
were
threatened
with death to stop them talking to UN inspectors. Some are
still
under
threat now.
“So the Kay
Report is not a final reckoning of Iraq’s WMD. He concludes that
we
cannot say
definitively either that weapon stocks do not exist or that they
did exist
before the
war. We are not at the point where we can close the file on any of
these
programmes,
he says. But what is clear already, after only three months, is
that
– at the
very least – Saddam kept in place the programmes and the
deception/
concealment
techniques so that he could revive his chemical, biological and
nuclear
weapons
capability when the coast was clear. The ISG’s work must go on
before we
can have
definite answers.”
504.
The Inquiry
has not seen any comments from other departments.
505.
Dr Kay
delivered his testimony to Congress on 2 October. He described
the
Interim
Report as a “snapshot” of the ISG’s first three months’
work.
506.
Dr Kay
stated that the ISG had discovered “dozens of WMD-related
program
activities
and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from
the
United
Nations during the inspection that began in late
2002”.
507.
Dr Kay
avoided drawing conclusions, but stated that Saddam Hussein
“had
not given
up his aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons
of
mass
destruction”.
526