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14 questions for Jack Straw Published in part in the Independent on Sunday, 22 June 2003. The published version is here. On Tuesday, Jack Straw will be appearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons to answer questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq. This is the only occasion that is scheduled so far at which the Foreign Secretary will have to justify in public and in detail the extensive allegations he made about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Mr Straw can count on having a largely sympathetic audience. Nine of the eleven members of the Foreign Affairs Committee voted with the Government to use force against Iraq. However, in the three days of hearings, some members of the Committee have shown the willingness to probe topics that ministers may find it difficult to address. So to assist the Committee, here are 14 questions that its members may want to ask the Foreign Secretary if they do want to understand how the case for war was constructed. A. The assessments
Mr Straw's predecessor, Robin Cook, revealed on Tuesday to the Committee that in the late 1990s, "we were not actually concerned about Saddam's missile programme", that "we did not believe he had a nuclear weapons programme", and that "we did not have anxiety that anthrax … was on the verge of being turned into a weaponised capability". If Mr Cook's account is accurate, then Jack Straw needs to explain why each of these issues was identified as key concerns by 2002. Was new information available that rendered previous assessments invalid? Or did Mr Straw believe that the Iraqi regime had stepped up its activities in all these spheres? Mr Straw has acknowledged in a memorandum to the Committee that ministers and special advisers "offered comments" on draft texts, but that the final text was approved by the Joint Intelligence Committee, made up of the heads of the British intelligence agencies. What reason could there be for political input into the drafting process? This is the plagiarised dossier. It was clearly put together in a slapdash way, with even the typographical errors in the original academic articles retained. Much of the attention has focused so far on the question of blame. However, a more interesting question may be what reason the government had in producing a dossier that contained no information about Iraq's weapons, but was largely about the history of Iraq's intelligence services. Was it produced to shore up the claim that Colin Powell was about to make to the UN Security Council that weapons inspectors were unable to find prohibited weapons because of Iraqi deception? Robin Cook told the Committee on Tuesday that during his time as Foreign Secretary, he found that neither the US nor the UK "really had much human intelligence inside Iraq". If this is indeed the case, what were the major sources used by the British government: individuals who claimed to be defectors, technological sources such as telephone taps, or UN weapons inspectors? Clare Short revealed to the Committee that MI6 had prepared a paper which said that, in Short's words, "there is a risk, and it was thought to be not very high", that chemical and biological agents would be used by Iraq. If this is the case, why wasn't this information conveyed to the public, as it would surely have served to allay the fears of families of British service personnel? B. The claims
The documents that were presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that purported to show that Niger had agreed to supply Iraq with uranium, are widely acknowledged to be fabricated. Tony Blair has insisted that the claim made in his September 2002 dossier was based on other sources. What are these sources, and why were they not presented to the IAEA? Jack Straw has claimed in a memorandum to Committee that "at no stage prior to the publication of the dossier did the UK possess or have sight of these [fabricated] documents". A few days ago, I met with the former US ambassador who had investigated these documents on behalf of the CIA. He has told me that the documents were passed to Washington by British intelligence agencies, who had obtained them in Italy in early 2002. Is Mr Straw able to confirm that documents on alleged uranium sales were passed to Washington? Hussein Kamel has been repeatedly cited by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to strengthen the case for military action. However, when Kamel was interviewed by UN weapons inspectors soon after his defection in 1995, he insisted that Iraqi leaders had taken the decision in 1991 to divest itself of all its prohibited programmes, as they knew they wouldn't be able to hide ongoing programmes from inspectors. Nevertheless, the full extent of Kamel's claims did not come out until February this year when the transcript of his interview was leaked to me. Was Mr Straw aware when he cited Kamel's defection that this individual had in fact given precisely the opposite evidence that the British government had previously attributed to him? Unconfirmed press reports indicate that the assessment of British agencies is that these vehicles are for producing hydrogen for balloons to guide artillery fire. This is in line with the claims of the scientists who worked on those vehicles and the actual contents of the vehicles. There are three reasons. From the very start of the inspections process, senior officials within the US administration stated that they would oppose the lifting of sanctions on Iraq regardless of the success of the weapons inspectors. This removed the incentive for Iraq to cooperate with the inspections. Some within the UN inspections teams actively cooperated with the US administration to assist in organising attempted coups within Iraq, and to collect information for US bombing raids. This provided a disincentive for Iraq to cooperate with the inspectors. Finally, the Iraqi regime knew it was politically damaging for the Clinton administration when inspectors were hindered: they could poke the Americans in the eye whenever there were political disagreements by blocking the inspectors, in the knowledge that the US would not be able to launch large-scale attacks on the regime. This provided an incentive for Iraq to obstruct the inspectors. Jack Straw told the House of Commons on 17 March - just prior the invasion - that he knew that Iraq had "10,000 litres of anthrax", and claimed that Hans Blix had pointed that out. By contrast, this was the amount of anthrax that Iraq could have produced prior to 1991 for which there is no clear record of destruction. Iraq clearly destroyed significant amounts of chemical and biological agents in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 war. It has been impossible for the inspectors to tell how much of certain agents was destroyed, and so any weapons produced in those categories before 1991 are recorded as "unaccounted for". Hans Blix records that significant progress was being made in reaching a better idea of the amount of anthrax destroyed in 1991 when the invasion began in March 2003. C. The inspections
Security Council Resolution 1441 urged all states to provide any information that they had on Iraq's weapons to the inspectors. Hans Blix has acknowledged that information was given to them, but he questioned the quality and value of this intelligence. Clare Short has told the Committee that certain aspects were held back, but did not explain why. Tony Blair has himself stated that the British government has information about Iraq's attempts to procure uranium that is different to the material held by the nuclear inspectors. Mr Straw should be asked to explain why this material was held back from them. It has become well-known that US officials, led by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, repeatedly demanded of Hans Blix that his reports be more strongly worded about Iraq's non-compliance. Were the British engaged in similar activities? It should perhaps be pointed out to Mr Straw that, if he fudges his answer, detailed accounts from the inspectors themselves may soon be filling journalists' ears. Hans Blix hold told the Security Council on 7 March that Iraq was taking "numerous initiatives .. with a view to resolving long-standing open disarmament issues", and this "can be seen as 'active', or even 'proactive'" cooperation. Iraq had destroyed 72 of its 120 medium range missiles on the request of the inspectors, and was ahead of the timetable to destroy the entire stock. The regime had passed a law prohibiting the production or retention of any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, as the inspectors had asked. They had verified that they had destroyed bombs containing anthrax in 1991 by excavating the destruction site. They had allowed inspectors to visit unhindered over 350 sites across Iraq, in almost 600 inspections, and were allowing scientists to be interviewed without any restriction. Some of these measures were long overdue, without question. But why did Mr Straw believe the process was worthy of terminating, just when it was producing its most substantive results? The UN has unprecedented knowledge and experience of searching for weapons inside Iraq, and has developed its resources to match this task. Iraqi scientists may be willing to talk to UN staff whom they have long-standing links with in a way that they would not talk to the US military-led Iraq Survey Group. Yet UN personnel are not being allowed to assist with the search. This only serves to discredit any claims that are made by the US personnel in the country about the items that they find. |
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Author: Glen Rangwala Back to the Index of Writings |
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