Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1240-1259)
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP, MR PETER
RICKETTS, CMG AND
MR WILLIAM
EHRMAN, CMG
27 JUNE 2003
Q1240 Mr Maples: After the decision
was taken to produce something for publication presumably then
a draft was produced, which then became the working document?
Mr Ehrman: Yes.
Q1241 Mr Maples: Who produced that
document?
Mr Ehrman: The Chairman of the
JIC was in charge throughout.
Q1242 Mr Maples: It would not just
have been the JIC?
Mr Ehrman: The chairman of JIC
working with the assessment staff but also there were people from
other departments who came to a mass of meetings throughout that
month producing that document.
Q1243 Mr Maples: I am trying to get
to the first draft of it and before people started to comment
on it and suggest amendments. That first draft was produced under
the auspices of the Chairman of the JIC, which seems to imply
it was not just JIC and its assessment staff that worked on it
but that people from the Foreign Office or Ministry of Defence
or Number 10 staff were involved in the preparation of the first
draft?
Mr Ehrman: It then came to the
JIC who saw it on a couple of occasions.
Q1244 Mr Maples: I understand that.
I drew your attention the last time you appeared before us to
what I perceive to be a difference in emphasis in what it says
in the body of the document and what it says in the executive
summary and you did not concur with me there was a substantive
difference in the evidence. At what point did the executive summary
start to get produced, presumably when the document was almost
finalised?
Mr Ehrman: The executive summary
was also produced by the chairman of the JIC and the assessment
staff, so it was exactly the same process.
Q1245 Mr Maples: It was presumably
produced when the main body of the document was almost finalised.
Mr Straw: I made this point in
one of the many answers I provided to your Committee, there was
also a conclusion but it was decided to drop that because it was
just repetitive of the body of the report and the executive summary
introduction.
Q1246 Mr Maples: The executive summary
was also prepared in exactly the same way, it was not a bolt-on,
done by somebody else afterwards, it was prepared in the same
way with the JIC Chairman in charge of that process. My final
question on this is were there several meetings or was most of
the input of suggested amendments and changes done in writing?
Mr Ehrman: There was certainly
a good many meetings but there were people from their own departments
looking at drafts and sending comments in.
Q1247 Mr Maples: Did you represent
the Foreign Office there?
Mr Ehrman: No, I did not represent
the Foreign Office in the drafting of that document, other members
of the Foreign Office were closely involved in the drafting.
Q1248 Mr Maples: In those meetings
at which it was discussed were you the Foreign Office's representative
at those?
Mr Ehrman: No, I was not. I became
a member of the JIC in October but I was responsible for that
general area before I came a member of the JIC. Many members of
the Foreign Office were involved in the drafting.
Q1249 Mr Maples: Can I ask the Foreign
Secretary, was he present at meetings?
Mr Straw: No, no, no. What happened
so far as my offering comments on the draft was that the draft
would appear in a box. I think we have given you some details
about this, I will give you some more. There were a number of
drafts that had been floating round from back in March, just information
summarising, as it were, the case again Saddam, some drawing on
intelligence, some from wholly public sources, one which I published
to the Parliamentary Party, it has now been widely circulated,
which was drawn almost entirely from open sources. The process
of this one was it came in my box, I cannot remember on how many
occasion, I offered some comments on the layout, for example I
favoured the inclusion of more graphics and diagrams, and a suggestion
to include in the foreword a reference to Saddam's defiance of
the United Nations and his unprecedented use of WMD. For the sake
of completeness you may like to know Mr O'Brien commented on setting
out the context better by greater use of the UNSCOM report.
Q1250 Mr Maples: Who else was at
the meetings, neither of you ever went to a meeting?
Mr Straw: I never went to a formal
meeting, that would have been completely inappropriate and an
interference with their process.
Mr Ehrman: It was done at the
working level, chaired by the Chairman of the JIC and then came
to the full JIC, as I mentioned a couple of times.
Mr Maples: That is enough for the time
being.
Q1251 Mr Chidgey: Foreign Secretary,
in response to a question raised by Mr Mackinlay earlier about
the fact that the whole international community accepted the case
as set out on the basis of the assessments of going to war on
18 March you say that you very much hope, or words to that effect,
that further evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would
be found in due course. What evidence has been found in Iraq of
weapons of mass destruction since the end of the conflict?
Mr Straw: We can give you some
details. As you know we have explained, and so did Mr Taylor in
some detail, about the reasons for the delay in the Iraq Survey
Group getting going. In terms of the statements made in here,
how many of these—
Q1252 Mr Chidgey: On assessment what
evidence has been found of weapons of mass destruction?
Mr Straw: Illegal programmes to
extend the range of al-Samoud missiles borne out by UNMOVIC findings
of instructions from al Samoud. The concealment of documents associated
with WMD programmes. You may have seen, we have not had a chance
ourselves to fully assess it, a report yesterday by a senior scientist
involved in the Iraqi nuclear programme about documentation that
he had hidden in his own garden and how the Saddam regime indeed
maintained a policy of trying to improve and develop their nuclear
programme.
Q1253 Mr Chidgey: Can I stop you
there, you are talking so far about plans, proposals and programmes.
You just said they were talking about plans to develop, has there
been any hard evidence found in Iraq post-conflict of the existence
of weapons of mass destruction?
Mr Straw: Mr Chidgey, whether
there has been a physical find of a chemical or a biological compound
ready for use in some delivery system the answer to that, as you
know, is no.
Q1254 Mr Chidgey: Weaponisation.
Mr Straw: Has there been significant
evidence of the existence of the these programmes, including the
things we have discovered and including the suspect mobile traders
which are the still the subject of analysis? Yes is the answer
to that. I hope that nobody here is suggesting that what the United
Nations concluded, what UNSCOM and the UNMOVIC concluded was that
without any peradventure at all Saddam had these programmes over
many years and had failed to answer for them, but that is not
true. I just say this: it would have been utterly irresponsible
in the face of all the evidence, which we knew for certain, about
Saddam's programme, chemical and biological programmes, and having
had a nuclear programme, his wish to re-establish that, and his
abject failure to provide any credible explanations about what
had happened to those programmes, for us just to have sat on our
hands.
Q1255 Mr Chidgey: Thank you, Foreign
Secretary, but can I just say this. As I understand it, the last
evidence of the programmes of Saddam Hussein were available up
until the time that UNSCOM left the country in 1998.
Mr Straw: Sorry, say that again?
Q1256 Mr Chidgey: Up until the time
when UNSCOM left the country in 1998—I think you say as
much in your report—"since the UN weapons were withdrawn
in 1998 there has been little overt information on Iraq's chemical,
biological, nuclear and ballistic missile programmes", and
from that point, and I will paraphrase, we have had to rely on
intelligence and intelligence very rarely offers a complete account
of activities. That is perfectly acceptable, I am not challenging
that. The point I am making is it is absolutely vital to make
a distinction between evidence and assessment and much of what
we have discussed over these last few weeks and months is the
action that we have taken n the basis of assessments rather than
evidence. I put it to you, Foreign Secretary, that we have been
dealing at great length with the work of the JIC and the best
intelligence available which was sufficient to convince the international
community of the case to go to war, but it would appear that after
the event there is something lacking between the veracity of the
assessments and the evidence that we are finding on the ground.
I asked you earlier in the week whether any inspections have been
undertaken of the sites that were mentioned in this document as
being the main concerns in terms of the chemical and biological
weapons potential in terms of production and you were not able
to tell me then whether they had been inspected. You did mention
that there were decontamination programmes possible, but we had
very little on that. I would have thought that would have been
the very first priority, to prove the case on the basis of evidence
rather than assessment, and it has not been forthcoming.
Mr Ehrman: If I could try to answer
that. Every single site in the dossier has been visited by UNMOVIC.
Q1257 Mr Chidgey: Post-war, pre-war
or both?
Mr Ehrman: Pre-war. Every site
that was in the dossier. I would just like to describe some of
the findings that they got. All of the sites listed in the dossier
were visited by UNMOVIC inspectors, and most revealed—to
a greater or lesser extent—an intent to develop prohibited
programmes. The dossier said that Fallujah was a facility of concern
which had been rebuilt since Desert Fox, though we did
not claim there was specific evidence of CW precursor or agent
production. Its production of chlorine and phenol could support
CW agent and precursor production. UNMOVIC declared that three
pieces of equipment found at Fallujah—destroyed by UNSCOM
and subsequently refurbished—should be destroyed. UNMOVIC
also established that the castor oil production plant at Fallujah,
which could have been used to produce ricin, had been rebuilt
and expanded. UNMOVIC confirmed that equipment had been rebuilt
at al-Mamoun: two rocket motor casting chambers, destroyed by
UNSCOM as being part of a prohibited missile programme, had been
refurbished by Iraq. Those chambers were subsequently destroyed
by UNMOVIC. UNMOVIC also confirmed that a large missile test stand
had been constructed at al-Rafah, far larger than required for
Iraq's declared missile programme. Five items of refurbished equipment,
proscribed by UNSCOM as being part of prohibited CW programmes,
were also found at al-Qa'qa. This was slated for destruction by
UNMOVIC but they did not have time to carry that out. Iraq declared
that it had restarted research and development of UDMH[1]which
is a powerful and prohibited missile fuel, at the chemical research
facility at Tarmiyah. UNMOVIC suggested that this could have been
intended as part of a programme to develop a missile with a range
far in excess of 150kms. That was what happened at the particular
sites mentioned in the dossier.
Q1258 Mr Chidgey: The particular
point I was making was about weaponising of chemical and biological
weapons. You mentioned, if I remember correctly, that the capability
in the phenol and chlorine plants had been re-established or existed,
but you also said which could be used for chemical weapons.
Mr Ehrman: This was what UNMOVIC
said.
Q1259 Mr Chidgey: That is right.
I am quoting what you said. The point is that is exactly what
it says here, that it could be used for chemical weapons. I am
looking for hard evidence that the weaponisation had taken place
and that does not seem to have been found.
Mr Ehrman: That was what UNMOVIC
found from going through the sites.
1 Unsymmetrical DiMethyl Hydrazine. Back
| 
