Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
TUESDAY 4 MARCH 2003
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP, MR PETER
RICKETTS CMG AND
MR ROB
MACAIRE
180. Can I just press this point because it
is very important. In that case, in the event that Hans Blix and
his team were able to say that from the baseline or the amended
base, whatever you wish to call it, they were satisfied that Saddam
Hussein had complied—admittedly a little tardily—with
the requirements of the Security Council and had destroyed or
it had been possible to verify that he had destroyed the list
of weapons of mass destruction, as we have set out, would the
British Government be prepared to accept that that was the fact?
(Mr Straw) We would take the fullest possible account
of it and it is a very—
181. Would you accept that as fact?
(Mr Straw) Hang on, Mr Chidgey. It is a huge if. Of
course if they came along and said "On our best information
we have checked back on what UNSCOM has said, that is the baseline
and we are satisfied that they have destroyed or got rid of all
this stuff or else they have made available what they have not
destroyed and got rid of the capabilities behind that; we believe
they have effectively disarmed" then why would there be an
argument about it?
182. The reason I ask that, Foreign Secretary,
is because it has been well mooted by many experts that it is
incredibly difficult to confirm in a country the size of France
that what would be significant amounts of weapons of mass destruction
in such small quantities as 20 tonnes could ever be found.
(Mr Straw) This is why we want full, active and complete
co-operation and why we want the inspectors to be able to freely
interview, in a non-intimidating environment, all the scientists.
183. Are we, in the event, asking Saddam Hussein
to try to prove a negative? In the event that we can never actually
prove that he has—
(Mr Straw) In other words, are we setting him a test
he cannot fulfil? No. Did the international community find him
guilty 12 years ago? Yes. That is set out with absolute clarity
in earlier United Nations Security Council resolutions. Did they
say he remains guilty? When we passed 1441, bear in mind that
operational paragraph 1 says that Iraq has been and remains in
material breach of its obligations under resolutions including
687 and it goes on to spell out why. So he remains guilty. It
is for them, as it were, to purge themselves of their contempt
of the international community by saying what they have done,
or not done, with all this unaccounted-for, very dangerous weaponry.
That is the key. We know very well that they can explain this.
Bear in mind, Mr Chidgey, that we are now in the same position
that we were in 12 years ago when Saddam was denying that he had
a biological weapons capability. It is so important people understand
this. They denied and denied and denied they had a biological
weapons programme. They ran the same kind of propaganda efforts
they are doing at the moment. Four years later the son-in-law
defected. He blew the gaffe on the whole thing and it turned out
to be a bigger programme than people had anticipated. Then he
was lured back to Iraq on the basis of safety and he was taken
out and murdered. That tells two stories: one about the nature
of their deception then but it is also a rather important reminder
that if you are an Iraqi scientist today you know what torture
and intimidation they are going for routinely. It concentrates
the mind.
184. Does that not, therefore, unfortunately
lead us to the conclusion that we can never be confident, given
the situation of weapons of mass destruction and the difficulty
of finding them—and we recognise it is not the role of the
inspectors—that weapons of mass destruction have been completely
removed from Iraq unless there is a regime change?
(Mr Straw) No. I, maybe rather naively, live in hope
of redemption. Not only for myself but for others as well. I do
not accept that. I think if there were a decision by the Iraqi
regime fully, actively and immediately to comply and they started
to act as, for example, the South African Government did in respect
of their atomic energy, nuclear weapons programme; you had the
interviews with scientists and you had a free environment and
you found out an awful lot more than the current inspectors have
and you, also, would have to have a continuing presence of the
inspectors, then we could be as satisfied as we could. Mr Chidgey,
let us be clear, do I believe that it is possible for Iraq to
disarm itself of its weapons of mass destruction and its capability
in a peaceful way? Yes, I do.
Sir John Stanley
185. Foreign Secretary, are there any circumstances
in which the British Government will not be following the United
States Government into a war against Iraq?
(Mr Straw) Again, it is a hypothetical
question. There may be, but I am not going to speculate about
what they would be. What we are seeking to do is to work closely
with all our allies. As you know, we have troops present in the
region and they have worked very actively to back diplomacy with
the credible threat of force. What we are seeking, and we are
doing this jointly with the United States and Spain, is a second
resolution. Beyond that I am not going to speculate.
186. I am surprised you are not willing to give
a basic indication of those circumstances. Do you still think
the British Government has an independent foreign policy?
(Mr Straw) Yes, of course I do.
187. In those circumstances, would not one of
the circumstances in which the British Government would not follow
the American Government into an invasion against Iraq be if the
British Government was satisfied with Saddam Hussein's compliance
with the resolution?
(Mr Straw) I rather suspect that if we were satisfied
with his compliance most other people would be. We use the same
intellectual processes and analytical processes as anybody else.
I think it defies imagination, with respect, Sir John, to imagine
that we could be at one end of a spectrum believing that Saddam
Hussein had been disarmed peacefully and the United States' Government
or any other government—the Government of the Russian Federation
or France—was at the other end of the spectrum saying "No,
they have not". May I say that what we are seeking and what
is at the core of our policy is implementation not of United Kingdom
policy nor of United States' policy but of United Nations' policy.
188. I am interested in your response, Foreign
Secretary. As you know, this Committee has had a lot of discussions
with the United States' government and there is quite a wide spectrum
of views as to the degree of co-operation or not from the Saddam
Hussein regime. Can I turn to your opening statement? You painted
a graphic picture of very large volumes of weapons of mass destruction;
you referred to 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals and a number
of other substances of large volume and therefore difficult to
conceal; you painted a graphic picture of those being moved around
the country; you referred in this public evidence session to the
intelligence basis for saying that you have a view as to the types
of locations in which these bulky items have been hidden; and
you referred to the way in which the Iraqi counter UNMOVIC operation
is being conducted to make certain that the UNMOVIC inspectors
do not find any of it. You painted a picture of a huge programme
of concealment and deception of the UNMOVIC inspectorate. Against
that background, do you not find it deeply perplexing and, indeed,
a matter of great concern that that picture of systematic deception
of UNMOVIC does not seem to be reflected certainly in plain language
in the two reports which Dr Blix has given—indeed, the second
report was somewhat more positive in terms of the degree of co-operation—and
how do you explain the vast difference between the picture which
you have portrayed, I am sure accurately to the Committee this
afternoon, and what we have seen from Dr Blix himself in front
of the Security Council?
(Mr Straw) You would have to ask Dr Blix that but
the statement he made on 27 January was excoriating of Iraq, as
was the statement he issued on 28 February. The one which he made
on 14 February was somewhere in between those two but it is worth
bearing in mind that at the end of his statement, and I am just
turning up the quotation, I think some of the language was slightly
softer in tone than the language of the report of 27 February,
and some people thought that this had meant that Dr Blix had given
Iraq a clean bill of health and that is simply not the case. If
I may read to you from the report which is in the Diplomatic White
Paper I published on page 80, he says: "How much, if any,
is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed
items and programmes? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons,
only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should
have been declared and destroyed. Another matter—and one
of great significance—is that many proscribed weapons and
items are not accounted for. To take an example, a document, which
Iraq had provided, suggested to us that some 1,000 tonnes of chemical
agent were `unaccounted for'."—and he then asks where
they are. He then says in talking about the declaration: "The
declaration submitted by Iraq on December 7 last year, despite
its large volume, missed the opportunity to provide the fresh
material and evidence needed to respond to the open questions.
This is perhaps the most important problem we are facing. Although
I can understand that it may not be easy for Iraq in all cases
to provide the evidence needed, it is not the task of the inspectors
to find it. Iraq itself must squarely tackle this task and avoid
belittling the questions." He then said at the meeting at
Baghdad "no open issues were closed" and at the end
he says: "If Iraq had provided the necessary co-operation
in 1991, the phase of disarmament—under resolution 687 (1991)—could
have been short and a decade of sanctions could have been avoided.
Today, three months after the adoption of resolution 1441 (2002),
the period of disarmament through inspection could still be short,
if `immediate, active, and unconditional co-operation' with UNMOVIC
and the IAEA were to be forthcoming". In other words, it
is not forthcoming, and that is the same position as the British
government.
189. Could I just put two other questions to
you in relation to UNMOVIC? May I say how much I welcome what
you said in your opening statement about the fact that unaccompanied
interviews with scientists represented no concession at all. That
concession was seized upon by some commentators with a degree
of naivety as being a concession when of course, for the reasons
you rightly explain, it is absolutely no concession whatsoever.
The question I would like to put to you concerns two more potential
"concessions" that might arise in this very delicate
possibly end-game business. Would you agree that, if there was
a concession to have an interview outside Iraq, that too would
be a probably meaningless concession unless the scientist himself
or herself was taken out with both his immediate family and also
his extended family, because otherwise the scientist in question
would know that that was going to be the end of any sort of sensible
life or life at all for the family left behind if he said the
wrong thing and, secondly, could you give the Committee any view
as to whether there is a risk that fabricated documentation might
suddenly be discovered, surprisingly, somewhere in Iraq and produced
by the regime to provide so-called evidence of the destruction
of previous WMD?
(Mr Straw) Sir John, on your first point, I am not
going to be proscriptive about how many members of the family
would need to leave with a witness but if the family were allowed
to leave—query what we mean by "immediate" and
"extended" and who is under attack, that is a matter
for judgment—then that would provide a much higher degree
of assurance that the witness was able to speak in safety, and
that his or her evidence would not be recorded and passed straight
back to the Iraqi regime nor would their family be intimidated.
It is a terrible commentary on the Iraqi regime that this has
to happen and it is something that those who seek always to put
the best gloss on the Iraqi regime need to take it into account
because you are right that some of the critics of the United Nations'
position on Iraq really are guilty of huge naivety and sadly,
but perhaps understandably, judging Iraq by their own standards,
and this is the thing that Saddam has played on all the time—the
fact that we in the international community have very much higher
standards of behaviour than he does. On your second point, he
is capable of everything including fabricating documents and evidence—that
is how he has both survived in a tactical sense but ruined his
country strategically over the last 12 years.
Chairman
190. If on Friday Dr Blix were to ask for extra
time, would you be able to reject that?
(Mr Straw) Mr Chairman, we take account
of what Dr Blix says—as we have all the way through.
191. But you might overrule it?
(Mr Straw) Well, let us see what he says, with great
respect. I did not anticipate his last three reports and I am
not going to anticipate this one.
192. How would you answer those who fear that
there is a certain inevitability that the only remaining superpower
has so many forces assembled with our own forces on the frontier
of Iraq that, if only for saving face, they dare not withdraw
without regime change?
(Mr Straw) I do not accept that. The United States,
more willingly than any other nation precisely because it is the
most powerful, signed up to 1441 in terms. 1441 is about the disarmament
of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction; 1441, by what
it does not say rather than what it does say but very plainly,
makes clear that if there is that compliance—full, active,
and immediate compliance—by Saddam Hussein of all his obligations
going back to 1991 then he will remain in government and President
Bush accepted that reality in an important speech he made in Cincinnati
in November of last year, so that is there and there is no issue
of loss of face. I know for certain that nothing would please
the American government more than if this could be resolved peacefully.
Mr Hamilton
193. I think in answer to an earlier question
by Mr Mackinlay you said that you were indeed a proponent of a
substantive government resolution before any conflict was entered
into and, indeed, last week you successfully secured a resolution
through the House of Commons but not without some debate or proposed
amendment. One of the main points in that amendment was that the
case for military action had not yet been made. Now, as you know,
France and Germany, and we mentioned this earlier, have requested
the inspectors be given more time, and indeed Hans Blix himself
has said that he is making progress but wants more time. We have
waited twelve years, and I know you have dealt with this partly
already, to disarm Iraq. Why is the government so hesitant to
allow a further four months, if that is the necessary time, to
bring more public opinion and other governments on board for stronger
support for military action?
(Mr Straw) Well, the purpose of this
strategy is not military action; the purpose is to secure the
disarmament of Saddam Hussein. If I felt that four months, or
any additional period, was going to bring this issue to a satisfactory
conclusion then we would all be up for it but just to repeat the
point that Mr Ricketts made a moment ago, the four months that
is being proposed is a staging post; it could lead to another
four months and then to another and then we would be back in the
situation that we have been in for the last twelve years where
Saddam plays on the resolve of the international community to
keep going, that other crises' agendas take over, that the intellectual,
diplomatic, political capabilities to resolve this degrade and
he is still there, and then that would send out a terrible signal
not only to him but also to other tyrannical regimes and rogue
states as to what they could get away with. So that is why we
do not accept that kind of approach if it is clearly going to
be with the aim of getting to full implementation of 1441, but
I also come back to the point of 1441 in that it talked about
"immediate".
194. The problem is that there seems to be a
big gap between what our government is proposing—indeed
Parliament has approved that last week—and public opinion,
and I think and I am sure many colleagues believe that in order
to wage a successful war, if it should come to military action—and
I think we all agree we hope it does not; we want to see Saddam
disarmed without military action but if it does come to that—surely
we cannot conduct that action if we do not have the support of
the British public. What are your views on that?
(Mr Straw) I have dealt with the issue of the support
of the British House of Commons which is presumably a representative
of democracy and a very active one and is the cockpit of the nation
and is representative of this country, and of course there were
deficiencies last week and they were reflected in the speeches
and the votes but I do not think they are as wide as you suggest,
Mr Hamilton. I could have made the point, and I thought about
this in advance of my speech last Wednesday that we too, in the
words of the resolution, do not believe that the case for military
action has yet been made—indeed, we have not made the case
for military action so there was, if you like, an argumentative
point to be made that we were in a similar position. Now because
some people had a different strategy and they were expressing
on that resolution I did not make that point, and also because
the amendment was striking out the final words of my motion which
talked about the final opportunity, but those who marched into
the lobbies on this amendment did so endorsing 1441 so they have
come quite a long way on that, and I will be saying to colleagues
if necessary: "Look, you too signed up entirely voluntarily
to 1441; does its mean what it says or not?"
195. Can I ask you a little bit about Secretary
of State Colin Powell's strong efforts to try and convince fellow
Security Council members to support the US position on Iraq? They
do not appear really to have succeeded and one of the problems
as far as public opinion is concerned is that certainly people
come to my advice surgeries and many of my colleagues, I am sure,
saying: "Yes, we accept Saddam Hussein has these weapons,
we accept he is an evil man, we accept the regime is a threat
in the region but why does this affect us?" Have you any
plans to publish further intelligence which you must surely have
which will at least begin to persuade swathes of the doubting
public that there is a case for immediate disarmament and that
Saddam and Iraq are a threat to this country as well as the rest
of the world?
(Mr Straw) So far as Secretary of State Powell's diplomatic
efforts or any of ours are concerned the effort is not complete
yet, and I know it is not quite the same but I do recall over
the many weeks in the run-up to 1441 that there were moments when
I thought we would never get a resolution, and moments when I
thought it might get nine votes and face a couple of vetoes, and
then the negotiations in the last five or ten days were really
very difficult but it came together, as we will see, so far as
this is concerned. We did get a 1441 and I have already talked
about the strength of 1441 and the legal base that it provides
and when we judge it appropriate we do give more information based
on intelligence assessments—that was the purpose of the
original report that was published to Parliament on the 24 September
in anticipation of the debate for which the House was recalled
and of other information which had been made public, but if people
ask me what is the case, I think the best statement of the case
is 1441. It is not an intelligence assessment where people may
argue about who is making the judgment: this is very open information.
The third preliminary paragraph of 1441 says: "The Security
Council . . . Recognising the threat Iraq's non-compliance
with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and long-range missiles poses to international peace
and security", and all 15 members of the Security Council
signed up to that statement. The history of the threat posed by
Iraq is set out in forensic detail in the earlier resolutions
here, 45 pages of them. I read some of them out in the House of
Commons last Wednesday—it is there. Now, people will have
to make their own judgment about the extent of the threat but
no one should be in any doubt there is a threat and that if you
have a tyrannical rogue regime like Saddam's in such an inherently
unstable region as the Middle East in any event, and if you allow
it to continue to be in defiance of the only single international
organisation which covers the globe, the United Nations and the
source of international law, then the consequences are going to
be serious. First of all, you will find that this regime may decide
to do what it did 12 years ago which is to invade a neighbour
or to use chemical or biological weapons on its own people or
neighbours; it is certainly supporting terrorism in Israel and
the occupied territories and helping to foment instability there;
that then leads to instability elsewhere and in addition to that,
to repeat a point I have made, it sends out a message to other
regimes that they can go ahead in defiance of all kinds of international
obligations to which they have signed up that they too can defy
these obligations, develop nuclear programmes and other weapons
of mass destruction, and no-one is going to take any notice. There
will then come a moment when these are being developed under our
noses when we really do have to do something about it but it may
be too late, and that is the answer.
196. Finally, I accept those very cogent arguments
that you and the Prime Minister and members of the government
have made, but why do you think that the majority of the British
public are still not in favour of the ultimate threat of military
action against Iraq for non-compliance?
(Mr Straw) I think where the British people seem to
be—and opinion polls vary on this—is in accepting
that there is a serious threat from Saddam Hussein, accepting
he needs to comply, and also accepting that they would support
military action if there were a second resolution. There is less
support in the polls if there is not a second resolution and I
understand that. It is the British public investing faith in the
United Nations system. Also not wishing to use military action
except as a last resort for the very good reason that people get
killed in military action—innocent and guilty people get
killed and areas are disrupted—and there is, rightly, an
abhorrence of war in our society and long may that continue. That
is the same position as the position of the British government.
Mr Pope
197. If we cast our minds back to the immediate
aftermath of September 11, there was a huge outpouring of public
sympathy in this country for the United States and our government
managed to transform some of that outpouring of public sympathy
into a broad, international coalition that supported the war against
terror. If we then bring ourselves up to the current day, it seems
to me that the situation is completely transformed. We have a
million or a million and a half people marching on the streets
against President Bush; we have a rebellion in the Parliamentary
Labour Party which is completely unprecedented of, I think, 122;
MPs' mail bags—and yours must be the same as mine—just
from this morning I had 20 or 30 e-mails this morning accusing
me of being cowardly, shallow, misguided, objectionable. How do
you account for this collapse in public support from a position
in September/October 2001 which was really sympathetic of the
United States to where we currently are? I put it to you, Foreign
Secretary, we are acting at the edges of the limits of democracy
here, and are finding it very hard to take with us public opinion
for a course of action which I firmly believe to be absolutely
right.
(Mr Straw) And the world's most important
newspaper, the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, said you were
quite right, too—so no worries! Mr Pope, the issues are
different. Of course they are related but they are different.
Everybody could see—literally see and watch with horror—as
those two planes collided with the twin towers on September 11
and then heard the evidence in respect of al Qaeda's involvement
in that which was very credible; there was an acute crisis; there
were British people who had lost their lives as well as Americans
and all the other nationalities in New York; it was in New York—if
you like the most international of all capitals and one with which
we have huge empathy and sympathy. There was, by the way, however,
a process in which the American government did not go the unilateral
route but the United Nations route, and issued an ultimatum to
the Taleban to yield up al Qaeda. They then failed to do so and
military action was taken, and the United States were fully entitled
to do that under their inherent rights under the United Nations
charter. It is different because that was an acute crisis: this
is a much more chronic crisis. It has been going on for 12 years
so, as I readily accepted in the House of Commons when I was speaking
last Wednesday, the first couple of questions in people's minds
are "Why Iraq?" and "Why now?", and one has
to answer those. I have done my best to answer them but it requires
more argument. There really was not a choice before the world
community post September 11: we had to do something about al Qaeda.
There was not a chronic solution to this which was just to leave
them because there would have been more September 11s almost certainly,
and in any event such was the shock in the United States of them
being attacked on their own territory for the first time for—
Mr Maples
198. Since 1812.
(Mr Straw)—since 1812 when we did
so, or we tried to call them to order, that there was bound to
be a desire to deal with the people responsible. Now here there
is a degree of choice—I do not think personally it is much
of one but there are people who argue, "It has been going
for 12 years, we do not like them, why not leave them?"—the
containment argument essentially. I have an answer to that which
is that containment equals rearmament. Others say they are still
willing to accept a degree of rearmament on the Saddam Hussein
regime but it is a more subtle argument. My own experience in
the constituency is like yours, and they have a very similar profile,
which is that people are worried about it as they are across the
country, but they accept the arguments if you take them through
them, and they have great faith in the United Nations.
Mr Pope
199. One of the issues that has been put to
me repeatedly by constituents and others is that there is a certain
inevitability to this. When A J P Taylor famously said that the
First World War broke out by railway timetable, there is a certain
momentum here; there are troops gathering and it will be impossible
to restrain that. Can you tell us a little further what your view
is on that? I heard a retired US General on the radio only last
week and when this question was put to him he said, "There
is a quarter of a million troops in the Gulf; they are not there
on vacation", and I want to put to you that there is a kind
of inevitability to all this, and it will be very hard at this
stage to withdraw those troops and if we did, unless we have absolute
complete rollover compliance, it would send an appalling message
to other tyrants as well as to Saddam?
(Mr Straw) Whoever that was was right
about their purpose there, and they have already served part of
their purpose because they have been the key reason why Saddam
has co-operated to the limited extent that he has. I have heard
it said about the First World War that this was a war by railway
timetable: my own reading of the cause of the First World War
suggests that there were genuinely other reasons. With the benefit
of perfect hindsight it is not a military action which I would
have advised the British government on but it looked different
at the time, and do not forget at the time the general view was
that it would be over very quickly but things turned out differently.
If you are saying, Mr Pope, is it important that decisions about
military action are always taken with reference to the political
considerations rather than simply military ones, the answer to
that is yes. It has to be.
|
