-
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 17.00 GMT
The clock ticking: chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix speaks with Tony Blair in front of 10 Downing Street, on 6 February 2003. Photograph: Ian Waldie/Getty
The UN path on to which the US was gently eased in 2002 by the UK and Americans such as Colin Powell was certainly preferable to unilateral US armed action against Iraq. However, for the UK to join the approach entailed a gamble: if inspectors were admitted, weapons found and destroyed, success could be declared. In the scenario that both the US and UK seemed to think more likely – that Iraq would, as it had done in the 1990s, resist or obstruct inspections – the security council might be persuaded to authorise armed action, which would bring both disarmament and regime change.
But if Iraq accepted inspections and made no obstruction and yet no WMD were found, how could the security council be persuaded to authorise armed action? And if it did not, where would the UK be with a trigger-happy US administration?
Security council resolution 1441, adopted on 8 November 2002, was draconian and there must have been some who expected, or at least hoped, that Iraq would reject it and open the path to request council authorisation for armed action. However, the Iraqi side, aware of the continued US military build-up, swallowed hard and gave inspectors full and relatively untroubled access. But no WMD were found.
In a statement to the security council on 27 January 2003, I noted that Iraq had provided co-operation "on process", but I also sought to bring some pressure on Iraq by saying that co-operation "on substance" was also indispensable. At the same time, I tried to demonstrate that we did not go to our inspection task with a predetermined view: UNMOVIC (the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) "is not presuming that there are proscribed items and activities in Iraq, but nor is it … presuming the opposite … Presumptions do not solve the problem. Evidence and full transparency may help."
I saw the US military build-up as pressure that could make Iraq go into a mode of active co-operation. After a meeting with Tony Blair in London, and on our way to Baghdad, I and Mohamed ElBaradei had this to say (according to a Reuters report of 6 February 2003): "UN weapons inspectors said on Thursday the final clock was ticking for Iraq, declaring that it must drastically improve co-operation on disarmament or face an unwelcome judgment in a key report to world powers next week." Blair's spokesman did not join in this kind of appeal, but was reported to have said simply that "it was clear that Saddam was flouting UN resolution 1441 and that time was running out".
In my briefing to the security council on 14 February, I referred to WMD and said: "So far, UNMOVIC has found no such weapons …"; but also noted: "many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for … One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded."
Noting that the Iraqi side had addressed some of the important outstanding disarmament issues and given us a number of papers, I said cautiously that although the papers did not provide new evidence, their presentation "could be indicative of a more active attitude focusing on important issues".
On 20 February 2002 – a week after the security council meeting – I had a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Blair. As I noted in my book Disarming Iraq, part of my conversation touched on the role and quality of intelligence. I said – as I had done earlier to Condoleezza Rice – that while I appreciated the intelligence we received, I had to note that it had not been all that compelling. Only at three sites to which we had gone on the basis of intelligence had there been any result at all.
Personally, I tended to think that Iraq still concealed weapons of mass destruction, but I needed evidence. Perhaps there were not many such weapons in Iraq, after all. Blair said that even the French and German intelligence services were sure there were such weapons; the Egyptians, too. I said they seemed unsure, about mobile biological weapon production facilities. I added that it would prove paradoxical and absurd if 250,000 troops were to invade Iraq and find very little. Blair responded that the intelligence was clear that Saddam had reconstituted his weapons of mass destruction programme. Blair clearly relied on the intelligence and was convinced, while my faith in intelligence had been shaken. (See, pp193-194. The account is based on a British note taken of the conversation.)
Many had noted the difference in tone between my security council statement on 27 January and that of 14 February. Asked about this on 3 February by Time magazine, I said:
"I am supposed to give an accurate description of the reality I see. And if the reality changes, I damn well ought to register that. By 14 February, we had been to Baghdad, and there were a number of things that … did not bring us close to disarmament but opened up the potential opportunity for progress."
The Iraqi side was indeed becoming more proactive in tackling unresolved issues. At the meeting of the security council on 7 March 2003, I said:
"There is a significant Iraqi effort under way to clarify a major source of uncertainty as to the quantities of biological and chemical weapons that were unilaterally destroyed in 1991 … A site was being re-excavated … inspection work is moving forward and may yield results.
"How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks? … It would not take years, nor weeks, but months."
At the meeting of the council on 7 March, I offered to make informally available to council members the so-called "cluster document" that was to become part of the work programme that the council had requested under the resolution 1284 (1999) that established UNMOVIC. It presented an up-to-date picture of weapons issues that remained unresolved and listed action that Iraq could take to help solve them. The existence of the document was known, and some thought it could be of interest in connection with the informal discussions that were taking place about setting benchmarks and time limits for Iraqi co-operation.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had read the cluster document on the plane coming over to the council meeting of 7 March and had been impressed by the number of unresolved issues listed and the amount of obstruction that Iraq had shown over time. Was he not aware that most of the issues listed as "unresolved" had been in that category also for UNSCOM? While significant as an up-to-date list and analysis of problems that were to be tackled, the list was hardly an eye-opener and was not seen as such by others.
Straw paid no attention to the recent Iraqi efforts on which I had reported and which seemed to have been made to help clear up some of the disarmament issues that had long been unresolved. Rather, he chose to focus on difficulties still encountered and called attention to the obstruction that Iraq had shown in the past 12 years, which was recorded in the document but was well known. In no doubt that prohibited weapons existed, he concluded:
"What we need is an irreversible and strategic decision by Iraq to disarm; a strategic decision by Iran to yield to the inspectors all of its weapons of mass destruction."
It seems to me that at this stage when, after many hundreds of inspections, no WMD had been found and when the credibility of intelligence was eroding, Straw joined his US colleagues in doubting that continued inspection efforts to solve disarmament issues would yield any "smoking guns". They moved their focus away from where it had been since 1991 and demanded instead an omnibus "strategic decision" by Saddam to disarm. The absence of such a decision could obviously be used as a basis for requesting council authorisation of armed action. There was no meaningful response from Saddam to this demand, but the absence of such a response still did nothing to persuade a council majority to authorise military action.
Most members continued to want more UN inspections. What was the sense of letting inspectors wait for more than three years, only to let them inspect for three and a half months? The UN path did not lead to the resolution of weapons issues, nor to the alternative council authorisation for armed intervention which the UK had originally hoped for – and gambled on. What was worse, the armed action and occupation that followed failed, as the inspectors had before them, to find any WMD in Iraq.
The US and the UK were deprived of the justification on which they had tried so hard to sell the war. They were driven to claim that an armed action that was opposed by three permanent members of the council – China, France and Russia – and that could not obtain the support of a majority was a way of "upholding the authority of the council". The only positive result was the toppling of a ruler who was a horror to his own people, but hardly even a long-term threat to his region.
You have characters left
Please read our community standards.
Closing this window without pressing "Post your comment" will result in your words being lost.
Are you sure?
Thank you for your comment. This has been submitted for moderation.
Your comment has been successfully posted.
Sorry, something has gone wrong and this action cannot be completed. Please try again later.