APPENDIX 6
Memorandum submitted by the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office on Iraq
By letters dated 9 January and 13 February 2001,
the Clerk to the Foreign Affairs Committee sought a memorandum
from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on HMG's policy towards
Iraq, including the No Fly Zones, with specific comment on articles
in The Sunday Times of 24 December 2000 and the Sunday
Telegraph of 28 January 2001 about Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction programmes.
HMG's policy on Iraq is to seek to contain Saddam
Hussein's threats to his neighbours and to eliminate his weapons
of mass destruction, in accordance with the obligations set out
in UN Security Council resolutions. When Iraq meets those obligations,
sanctions can be lifted. The most recent comprehensive resolution—the
UK-led UN SCR 1284, adopted in December 1999—imposes no
new obligations on Iraq for the lifting of sanctions. It offers,
for the first time, the suspension of sanctions if Iraq co-operates
with the new arms control body, the UN Monitoring, Verification
and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). It also allows the substantial
expansion and improvement of the UN "oil for food" programme.
This has been achieved. There has been a seven-fold expansion
of the programme since it began in 1996 and the majority of goods
imported no longer need to be referred to the UN Sanctions Committee.
But Iraq continues to reject UN SCR 1284 and refuses to co-operate
with UNMOVIC. Despite this, under its Executive Chairman, Dr Hans
Blix, UNMOVIC has continued preparations to begin its work in
Iraq.
We have continued to try to persuade Iraq to
accept the resolution and allow progress towards the suspension
and lift of sanctions. In August 2000 the Foreign Secretary sent
messages to a number of Arab Foreign Ministers asking them to
do what they could to encourage Iraqi co-operation. In response,
six of them met Tareq Aziz in New York in early September. The
UK Representative at the UN in New York also discussed the resolution
with the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN in August. Over recent months
Mr Hain, then Minister of State at the FCO, worked closely with
both the Omani and Qatari Foreign Ministers to encourage Iraq
to co-operate with the UN. We have seen no sign in these discussions
of a change in Iraq's position. The UN Secretary-General however
met the Iraqi Foreign Minister Al-Sahhaf in New York on 26/27
February, having initiated contact with the Iraqis in the margins
of the OIC Summit in Doha last November.
We constantly review the effectiveness of the
instruments through which we pursue our policy. The Foreign Secretary
held initial discussions with Colin Powell on 5-7 February. These
were of a general and exploratory nature, considering a number
of Iraqi issues, including our ideas for "narrowing and deepening"
the sanctions regime. We shall continue to discuss with the US
how best to focus on our fundamental objective, containing the
threat which Iraq's military and weapons of mass destruction pose
to the region.
The importance of returning arms control inspectors
to Iraq is highlighted by the issues raised in articles in The
Sunday Times of 24 December 2000 and the Sunday Telegraph
of 28 January 2001. We judge it highly unlikely that the Iraqi
regime has a nuclear weapon yet. But if Iraq's nuclear programme
had not been halted by the Gulf War, Saddam might well have had
a nuclear weapon as early as 1993. In December 1998, when Iraqi
intransigence forced weapons inspectors to leave the country,
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessed that Iraq
retained no significant nuclear capability. But since the end
of 1998 the IAEA has been unable to provide assurances on Iraqi
activity in this area. A UN panel of 22 independent experts concluded
in March 1999 that serious gaps remained in Iraq's declarations
on chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles, such
as Iraq's failure to tell the truth over its production and weaponisation
of VX (nerve agent). Statements from Baghdad in January 2001 repeating
Iraqi claims to Kuwait are a reminder of Iraq's continuing ambitions
and the need for the IAEA and UNMOVIC to re-establish an effective
arms control regime in Iraq under SCR 1284.
HMG fully shares the international concern about
the humanitarian situation in Iraq. The Iraqi regime, not sanctions,
is to blame for the suffering of the Iraqi people. We have led
attempts to alleviate their plight through improvements in successive
"oil for food" resolutions of the Security Council.
With SCR 1284's removal of the ceiling on the amount of oil Iraq
can export, about $14 billion was available for humanitarian expenditure
last year. There is currently about $4 billion unallocated by
the Iraqi regime in the UN account available to buy civilian goods
and equipment. The UN has introduced simplified "fast-track"
procedures to speed up the contract process. We work consistently
to facilitate the export to Iraq of humanitarian goods and we
will continue to refine the approval process further in any way
consistent with the SCRs and the humanitarian interests of the
Iraqi people. Meanwhile the Iraqi regime continues to exploit
the suffering of the Iraqi people in its propaganda to press the
UN to lift sanctions unconditionally. It could achieve the lifting
of sanctions by co-operating with UNMOVIC. That it does not do
so implies that the Iraqi regime gives priority to weapons, not
the welfare of the Iraqi people. This is further reinforced by
its failure, for example, to spend any of the $625 million allocated
to the health sector during the last six-month phase of the "oil
for food" programme.
UK and US pilots continue to patrol the No Fly
Zones (NFZ) over northern and southern Iraq. The NFZs were established
in 1991 (north) and 1992 (south) in support of SCR 688 to stop
Saddam Hussein from using his aircraft in the brutal repression
of his own people as he had previously. Iraq's limited military
incursion into Kurdish territory for three days in December 2000,
and some 250 violations of the NFZs by Iraqi combat aircraft since
December 1998, show Baghdad's continuing hostile intentions towards
the Kurds and Shia of Iraq.
Since late 1998, Iraqi forces have systematically
targeted UK and US aircraft patrolling the NFZs. There have been
over 1,200 threats against our aircrew, including artillery and
missile attacks. In the first weeks of 2001 the threat to our
aircrew increased. Iraq fired more missiles at our aircraft in
January than in the whole of last year. This compelled us to act
on 16 February against military targets directly linked to this
increased threat, including some outside the NFZs. This action
was a proportionate response in self-defence taken solely in order
to reduce the risk to our pilots. It did not represent a change
in policy on the NFZs, nor an escalation. Every effort was made
to avoid civilian casualties. Iraqi claims of civilian casualties
must be treated with extreme caution. The Iraqis have claimed
such casualties even on days when no UK/US aircraft have been
flying.
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