Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP, MR TIM
DOWSE AND
MR PETER
RICKETTS CMG
MONDAY 28 OCTOBER 2002
140. What about the presidential palaces? Is
this an area of disagreement?
(Mr Straw) I think there is now understanding amongst
the P5 that if there are to be proper inspections they have to
include the presidential palaces. We cannot have an obvious hole
in the arrangements where "presidential palaces", which
cover literally the area of Blackpool, for example, are exempt
from inspection because that would be no inspection at all.
Sir John Stanley
141. Foreign Secretary, as you know, the Committee
had briefings in New York and Washington the week before last
and in the discussions we had with the US Government it was made
very clear to us that in the event of there being military action
it would be insufficient to focus that military action on simply
seeking to remove Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
and that military action would have to be accompanied not merely
with removing the weapons of mass destruction but also with regime
change. Does the British Government take the same view, that if
there is military action it would be purposeless to focus simply
on disarmament and that if military action takes place it must
necessarily involve regime change?
(Mr Straw) Let me take this from the top. What would
be the objective of any resolution which we hope will be agreed
inside the Security Council? The objective of such a resolution
would be to disarm Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime of its
weapons of mass destruction, full stop, and not regime change
per se. How could that be achieved? Hopefully by peaceful means,
albeit backed by the threat of force. If, however, those means
fail then a change in the regime in Iraq would almost certainly
become a consequence of any military action and may be the means
to the end of the objective of disarming Saddam Hussein because
by that stage it would have become a self-evident truth that the
existing regime was unwilling to comply with international law.
Beyond that I am not going to speculate, Sir John, because the
circumstances in which military action may take place cover a
wide spectrum of possibilities.
142. I would not in any way seek to ask you
to speculate on anything to do with future military operations
for very obvious reasons. I am simply seeking clarification of
the British Government's position which from what you said appears
to be virtually identical to that of the American Government,
namely, that if military operations start it would be largely
futile to just focus on trying to remove Saddam Hussein's weapons
of mass destruction and it would have to be accompanied by regime
change. The point the Americans made to us was that we might be
able to destroy a significant amount of Saddam Hussein's weapons
of mass destruction but they were saying to us that as long as
Saddam Hussein was still there it was a total certainty that he
would try and build back that weapons of mass destruction capability
and therefore he had to go.
(Mr Straw) I have said what I have said. What we are
seeking in the United Kingdom Government is a peaceful resolution
of Saddam Hussein's flagrant violation of international law, the
rule of the United Nations. I hope and pray that it is possible
to secure disarmament of the Iraqi regime by peaceful means and
if they are disarmed then it is literally the case that the nature
of that regime will have been changed, albeit that the regime
itself will not have been. If those peaceful means are not possible
then the message we will have received from Saddam Hussein is
that his defiance is complete; he is unwilling to co-operate with
the international community, and it is therefore very hard to
see, short of some late conversion by him, how he could possibly
assist in that disarmament.
Mr Chidgey
143. Foreign Secretary, putting aside your optimism
for one moment, can I just take your mind back to what happened
after the Gulf War and the inspection regime went in then to destroy
weapons of mass destruction. I am sure you will be better briefed
than I in knowing that it was only at the last minute that it
was discovered that many of the weapons of mass destruction that
Saddam Hussein had had not been discovered and it was only with
the defection of one of his sons-in-law that the UN inspectors
were able to find and destroy them. Given that scenario I would
like to ask you how confident you are under the new inspection
regime, given the time that Saddam Hussein has had to develop
his skills, that we can in fact discover all weapons of mass destruction
that threaten the region and destroy them? Secondly, what is your
policy and the Government's policy in a situation where, subsequent
to an inspection and destruction programme, Saddam Hussein would
of course apply for sanctions to be dropped and you may well therefore
find us a hostage to fortune in the event that the weapons of
mass destruction are still there in plentiful supplies? What advice
have you received on those two questions?
(Mr Straw) You are asking me to prove a negative here.
What we know from the previous inspection is that when there was
a very deep international consensus about the imperative of Saddam
Hussein accepting the weapons inspectors that led to compliance
by Iraq. It also led to a flow of information which is obviously
necessarily a part of any inspection process. The combination
of those was that a large amount of Hussein's arsenal of weapons
of mass destruction and the capability to produce them were destroyed.
We also know that in the last four years since the inspectors
had to leave Saddam has been rebuilding capabilities in both chemical
and biological weapons and trying to build up his capability in
the area of nuclear weapons. It is my belief that the tougher,
more rigorous, better resourced the inspection regime the more
likely the regime is to be successful.
144. May I ask if you are confident that the
new inspection regime will be tougher and more efficient than
the previous one?
(Mr Straw) It is learning from what happened before,
not least in respect of restrictions by Saddam Hussein as to where
they could or could not go or conditions that they could or could
not have when they went to places. That is one of the reasons
why we have been so insistent on the right of the inspectors to
go anywhere, including presidential sites. Your last point was
what would happen in respect of sanctions. We will have to see.
The removal of sanctions is not part of any draft resolution that
I have seen.
Mr Maples
145. We were told in the United States that
under the new inspection the part of the United Nations in this
was unlikely to be as effective as UNSCOM because of the facilities
available to it, which I suppose largely dictate expertise in
terms of personnel. Do you believe this is true or do you believe
we can take steps or the United Nations can take steps to make
sure that it is at least as effective as UNSCOM was?
(Mr Straw) A great deal of work here is going on to
make sure that the skills and numbers of people available to the
inspection regime are similar to if not greater than those available
to UNSCOM, and also, in respect of the IAEA, the International
Atomic Energy Agency will be conducting inspections alongside
it. We are obviously aware of the need for high level human capability
as well as other resources. Otherwise the inspections will not
work out as they should do.
146. As long as that is being dealt with that
is fine. The second thing I wanted to ask you about is this question
of the one or two resolutions. When we were in New York we also
met the Russian and French ambassadors to the United Nations who
made it very clear, and I think I summarise their position correctly,
that what they were not prepared to see was one resolution which
called on Iraq to comply with the new inspection regime and at
the same time authorised a single member of the Security Council
by implication to take action if they felt that resolution had
been broken. What you seemed to be implying was that if we allowed
this to take place in a two-stage resolution, one resolution imposing
a new inspection regime and then a need for another one to authorise
military action, then somebody who voted for resolution one could
have a veto on or not vote for resolution two. I wondered why
you or we collectively think that that is likely to happen, because
what it would mean would be that somebody who took the problem
seriously enough to have voted for resolution one then, when it
was pretty clear that Iraq was in breach of that, was actually
prepared to veto the United Nations Security Council taking any
action because that would actually be to put the United Nations
Security Council in the worst of all possible worlds. If that
was your view as a country you would be better off to veto resolution
one and never allow resolution two to arise because, as I say,
you would by voting for one and vetoing two be putting the United
Nations Security Council in an impossible position. I wonder why
you think that is likely to happen and why it is a problem.
(Mr Straw) I did not say it was likely to happen.
All I was trying to do was to explain to the Chairman why these
discussions take a long time because there are fears on both sides.
One can equally turn the point on its head, as I have done on
many occasions when talking to my French and Russian counterparts,
and say that I do not believe that the United States Government
or the United Kingdom Government would participate in military
action against Iraq if it were not justified. Everybody involved
in these very intensive negotiations, from and including President
Bush, wants to see a peaceful resolution to Saddam Hussein's flagrant
violation of international law if that is remotely possible. What
is being teased out in these intensive discussions is the routes
that events may take so that we are all clear about the likely
actions we will take and positions that will be taken by the different
Member States in the event, for example, that there is a violation
so that we are able to square the circle or deal with these anxieties
on both sides. May I say, Mr Chairman, that when I said to Mr
Chidgey, I think it was, that there was not anything in the existing
draft resolutions relating to sanctions, that is correct.
Mr Chidgey
147. What about previous resolutions?
(Mr Straw) Mr Ricketts has reminded me that in 1284
there are provisions for the lifting of sanctions and those would
still apply, but only when we have certified that Iraq is back
in compliance.
148. Chairman, it is worth stressing that previous
experience shows us that inspections are not in fact totally reliable
in terms of finding weapons of mass destruction. We could find
ourselves in a situation where sanctions are lifted and just a
little while after weapons of mass destruction are still available
to Saddam Hussein.
(Mr Straw) There is a variety of possibilities. The
inspectors will be intent on doing an extremely thorough job before
they offer any certification. Their knowledge base will depend
not only on what physical facilities they find but also what access
they have to data, to records, and so on. They may be fortunate,
they may not. I have no confidence in the Iraqi regime, let me
make this plain. We would not be here if any of us had any confidence
in the Iraqi regime, but I am someone who does have considerable
confidence both in the IAEA and in UNMOVIC, and both Blix and
ElBaradei as I speak are before the Security Council giving a
presentation to them.
Andrew Mackinlay
149. There are two aspects I want to ask the
Foreign Secretary. One I have given Mr Dowse notice of on our
laboratories and internal chemistry labs but I will come to that
in a moment. Because of time can I merge together two points?
Both in the United States and when we have had witnesses here,
including a former Ambassador to Iraq, I have bounced off them
the concept that perhaps Saddam might not understand absolutely
what is before him: one, that we really do mean business, "we"
being the United Kingdom and allies, the United States, but also,
taking up the point you responded to Sir John Stanley on, if he
complies we are not in the business as such of regime change.
Witnesses, both in the United States and here, have said that
they share the anxiety that this man probably might not understand.
I use the analogy of the Cuba missile crisis where you did have
intelligent people at both ends of the spectrum who nevertheless
did use secret interlocutors to make it quite clear, one, the
gravity of the situation, but also the key to unlocking the situation.
I wonder if you can give us some reassurance that that point has
been taken on board. Also, flowing from that is that I am concerned
that even later on this afternoon my colleagues may quite rightly
ask you about the legal legitimacy of the concept of self-defence
under the UN Charter. We have been through this before. As a politician
who is defending the Government I am frustrated about the presentational
aspects. Rather than going down that road about whether or not
it poses a threat and therefore you have got to take defence,
we really ought to be emphasising here in the United Kingdom and
our United States colleagues that it is a question of enforcement
of the United Nations authority. I think we have got off on a
wrong tack and I put to you that rather than going along with
this business about whether or not you have got a right and there
is an imminent threat to the united States coast from Saddam Hussein,
we ought to be saying that what is at stake is the United Nations.
That is (a) and (b) I want to put down and I will come on to the
laboratories afterwards.
(Mr Straw) I agree with you. Whether that has come
across fully or not is for others to judge. I can only say that
in all the speeches I have ever made about this I have said that
it is the authority of the UN that is at stake and I recall that
at our party conference I went through all week saying that it
is not the United States, it is not the United Kingdom but the
United Nations' authority that is at stake in this. Therefore
it is not the responsibility alone of the UK or of the US but
of the United Nations. That firm position must be taken in respect
of Iraq and it is about the authority of the United Nations. That
is why I believe that the Security Council has such a responsibility
to grip this issue; it is very important that it does. It cannot
dodge it. Otherwise, for sure the authority of the international
order so painstakingly built up over a period of almost 60 years
will be at stake with very serious consequences well beyond Iraq.
150. What about Saddam understanding, because
there are one or two people who believe he might not fully understand?
(Mr Straw) All the evidence is that he does understand
when there is a clear threat of force and he is faced with the
alternative. That is why he complied post the 1991 defeat. For
sure, alongside complying he worked hard to destabilise the inspectors
and to split the international community and he ceased fully to
comply and then to comply at all at the point where he had succeeded
in splitting the international community to the point at which
the inspectors found it impossible to do their job. I just say
this to you, Mr Mackinlay. There is a reason why in the space
of three days, between 11 September and 14 September, the position
of the Iraqi Government went through a 180 degree turn on whether
to have the inspectors in. As sure as I sit here, on September
11 the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister was saying, "We will not
have inspectors", and on 14 September as I was leaving New
York, they said (the same people), "We will have inspectors
in". Why were they saying that? Because they had suddenly
digested the fact that the international community was getting
extremely impatient with the excuses, lies and prevarication from
the Iraqi regime and that there had to be the beginnings of compliance.
Have they been told about the consequences? Yes. I know that.
I have had it from people who have spoken to them.
151. I am grateful for that. I will not probe
you further on that. A nod is as good as a wink. I am satisfied
with that.
(Mr Straw) Foreign ministers I have spoken to and
heads of government have themselves been in to see Saddam Hussein
and told him in words of one syllable about the consequences.
152. Last week, technically on another inquiry,
on the Biological Weapons Convention, I was questioning Mr Dowse
who has accompanied you this afternoon[1].
I really am concerned with a degree of some urgency about our
postgraduate institutions in this country. The way I understand
it there is very little supervision of what is going on, partly
because of sheer volume and the old days when we were not so exercised
about these things, like pre-September 11. There is a transient
scientific community in this country which brings us a lot of
money and there is also the need for academic freedom, which I
accept, but nevertheless we do not know who is doing what this
very afternoon in some of our laboratories in our academic institutions,
what they are literally here for, where they come from and what
they are keeping in the back of the fridge. I put it in simple
terms. Since I met Mr Dowse last week I have probed one or two
people who are in this field and privately they will say to me,
"Yes, you have got a point, Mackinlay".
155. I anticipate that Mr Mackinlay will ensure
that the Committee come back to this point.
(Mr Straw) If you think we ought to have a look at
it, we will have a look at it.
Mr Olner
156. To take you, Foreign Secretary, back to
the UN, it is France and Russia who seem to be holding out against
any sort of agreed statement. Given events over the weekend and
the experiences there, the particularly nasty form of terrorism
within Moscow itself, have you any private thoughts as to how
we can get France to be a more honest broker?
(Mr Straw) If you had the French Foreign Minister,
Dominique de Villepin, in front of you,—
157. If he came.
(Mr Straw) I am sure he would accept the invitation.
His English is significantly better than my French, but if you
had him in front of you I am sure he would say that it was the
United States and the United Kingdom who were holding out against
an agreement. Even my Russian counterpart would put it in similar
terms. What is happening here is that there is a discussion taking
place between the five members of P5. Everybody is agreed about
the need to secure compliance by Saddam Hussein of the previous
decisions of the Security Council. I have to say that the fact
that that has now become a shared imperative represents very significant
progress since President Bush's speech on 12 September. So far
the points of debate are on how that is to be achieved. My own
sense is that the areas of difficulty between the parties are
reducing. I hope that we will reduce them still further. We cannot
be sure but that is the position we are in.
Sir Patrick Cormack
158. Foreign Secretary, in your statement to
the House last week on Bali you talked about the campaign against
terrorism lasting years, maybe even decades. Since that statement
we have had yet another terrible terrorist outrage. What does
the nature of the timing of these acts in Indonesia and in Kuwait,
now Moscow, etc, tell us about the state of al-Qaeda? Do you believe
that al-Qaeda has indeed been involved in all of these?
(Mr Straw) We do not know for certain. The group which
has claimed responsibility and which was obviously immediately
involved in the outrage in Moscow was of Chechen rebels, and those
in Indonesia were Indonesian rebels, but both groups are known
to have links with al-Qaeda. We cannot be certain at the moment
about the precise nature of the links in the cases of these particular
atrocities. The fact that well over 300 people have been killed
and many more injured in terrorist outrages in the space of two
weeks should alert us to the continuing threat that we all face
from this kind of terrorism, and today we had the shooting of
an American diplomat in Amman, the capital of Jordan, and I am
afraid to say that the threat is going to stay. Indeed, the combination
of failing states, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
by rogue states and international terrorism represents the greatest
strategic challenge to the civilised world at the moment and I
think for at least the next two decades. We have two so-called
asymmetric threats. I have made the point recently in two speeches
that I have delivered that in the last year, for example, only
one of 24 conflicts identified was a classic conflict between
two functioning states. All the rest come within the category
of these other threats: conflicts within states, conflicts based
on failing states and so on, so these are the new strategic threats
and the most immediate and acute threat is from international
terrorism which labels itself with the face of Islam but which
represents a most profound perversion of Islam and which has a
fanaticism based on religious as well as political belief but
often, as we saw in Afghanistan, hardened in a failing state and
extremely anxious to conspire with those who have access to weapons
of mass destruction.
159. In your statement last week[2]
you were talking particularly about British subjects. One accepts
that it is exceptionally difficult to give adequate warning without
spreading unnecessary panic, that this balance has got to be achieved,
but you also said that had there been even a one per cent chance
of knowing on September 10 what might happen on September 11 then
action should have been taken. Do you believe, and there has been
much press speculation, that there was a one per cent chance of
terrorists attacking Bali before they struck on the 12th?
1 Foreign Affairs Committee. First Report of Session
2002-03, The Biological Weapons Green Paper, HC150, p Ev
4.
(Mr Straw) You have a point.
153. I do, yes, of some validity, I
should stress to you. You were Home Secretary and are now Foreign
Secretary; you have got the Intelligence Service under you. I
and I think members of this Committee are deeply concerned and
I think we would be reassured if you said, "Yes, we are looking
into this", because it cannot be a satisfactory state of
affairs. We really do not know what is happening in our institutions
and, I put it to you, who they are.
(Mr Straw) There is a resumed
Biological Weapons Convention Review taking place on 11 November,
Monday week, and this is a high personal priority for me. I published
a Green Paper about the Biological Weapons Convention earlier
in the year. There are a lot of detailed discussions going on.
I am very anxious indeed to see some progress made internationally
and for the gap between the various parties to be closed. We currently
use a voluntary scheme. I think there are many advantages in using
a voluntary scheme. If the Committee says to me, after having
looked at this, "We think you ought to look at this again",
then we shall do so. That is the best I can say. If this is your
judgment I will certainly look at it again.
154. Your colleague did undertake to
give us some more details anyway. I do not want to prolong the
meeting but I do think we need, even if it is only confidence,
some greater details on this.
(Mr Straw) We can provide you
with those but it is probably best if they are provided confidentially.
Our science base here generally is very large. There are various
indicators for the depth and breadth of our science base which
includes a disproportionate number of citations of British papers,
a disproportionate number of Nobel prizewinners in the scientific
field and so on. There are many other indicators and maintaining
and developing our science base is extremely important. The second
point is that the boundary between some science whose application
is for military purposes and some science whose application is
for civilian purposes can be very blurred indeed, and this is
most obvious in the area of biology and biochemistry and many
other areas as well. You have got to be careful because there
are issues here of the climate for scientific endeavour as well
as genuine issues of academic freedom, so you have got to balance
a number of factors. However, as I say, we are happy to look at
this again but it is better if we brief you in confidence about
all this.
Chairman Back
2
HC Deb, 21 October 2002, Cols 21-35 (Commons Chamber).
(Mr Straw) I dealt with this
rather fully in my statement but I am happy to repeat it. We certainly
received no intelligence whatever which was sufficient to justify
using the word "warning". As I said, what we had was
this generic threat information which related to six islands and
those six islands taken together cover a 100 million population
and 60 per cent of all tourist destinations for western tourists
in Indonesia. That was taken into account. It was received on
27 September-I am speaking from recollection but we can give you
the letter if that recollection is not accurate-and I think the
final threat assessment made by the Security Services and other
streams of intelligence by 8 October led to a judgment which I
in retrospect think was correct, that we should not change the
overall threat levels for Indonesia. It is immensely difficult,
Sir Patrick. If we were to react to every piece of intelligence
the world would seize up. We would have done the terrorists' job
for them. Bear in mind that one of the reasons why intelligence
assessment takes some time is that it does not come with a certificate
of truth attached to it. Even if it had that they have then got
to decide on its value. Quite a lot of intelligence that is fed
or picked up is deliberately the opposite of the truth. The difficulty
is that we do not know until we really assess it which part is
true and which is false. It is a very complex exercise.
Sir Patrick Cormack: I fully accept
that. Thank you very much indeed.
Mr Olner Back
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