النص مستخرج آلياً من صورة الوثيقة أو من ملف قديم، وقد يحتوي أخطاء في بعض الكلمات أو ترتيب الأسطر. الملف الأصلي هو المرجع.
Caine cars or shortly after the conflict. So to say we are surprised at the ISG's findings so far is no less than the truth.
The issue of US/UK good faith can be laid to rest. We received the intelligence. We honestly believed it.
The issue now is: was it right? If it was not what can we learn about the difficulties of gathering intelligence in these situations?
What we can say is this:
(a)
there is no doubt that Saddam had WMD. It was not just US/UK intelligence agencies that said so, it was many others around the world. In any event, Saddam used them. The UN when it left in 1998 noted that large stockpiles of weapons and agents were unaccounted for. They are still unaccounted for. That is why UN Resolution 1441 unanimously recognised the threat posed to international peace and security by Iraq's proliferation of WMD and long range missiles.
(b)
We should exercise some caution in saying definitely no stockpiles now exist. In the 1990s despite intensive investigation by UN weapons inspectors, the full extent of Saddam's programmes remained concealed for years. We know from intelligence pre-war that he intended to conceal. The ISG has found ample evidence of an intention to conceal. Look at what we know about Libya's CW weapons, now that they are co-operating compared with what we could obtain through intelligence.
I don't concede there are no weapons. But I do concede we expected to find them sooner and there is plainly a legitimate issue about the accuracy of the intelligence.
(c)
Let us get it clear what the ISG has found so far and what Dr Kay has said.
The ISG has found:
• Evidence of efforts to maintain CBW and nuclear capabilities including equipment, documents and organisms. Teams of scientists were retained to work on them.
• Planning and design work for missiles of up to 1000km range DECLASSIFIED
Dr Kay has said
• Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of UNSCR 1441
• He believes no major new production of weapons occurred post 1991.
• That Saddam had the clear intent to possess WMD
• But some old stockpiles may well exist and the capabilities and determination remained intact.
• That Iraq deliberately waged a policy of destruction and looting to cover the tracks of its WMD programmes
• That the ISG has learned things about Iraq's WMD programmes that no UN inspector could have learned.
• He speculates that Saddam may have been told tales about the programmes or that something may have been moved to Syria
• That the conflict was justified
• That the US/UK did not interfere with the intelligence
(d)
however in view of the fact that we certainly thought production of new weapons was continuing and that Iraq had weapons ready to use and it may be that this was not the case, it is sensible to learn the intelligence lessons.
Therefore the US is going to have a Commission of Experts look into it and report back by March [?].
The UK will refer the issue back to a Committee which will have access to the raw intelligence and will co-operate closely with its US counterpart.
Meanwhile the ISG will continue its work on the ground since there are more than 20 million pages of documents and many unvisited sites still to follow up. It is still conducting interviews and following up on other lines of inquiry including Iraq's covert procurement efforts.
(2) WMD in general
Whatever the intelligence lessons from Iraq, let us be in no doubt about the threat.
DECLASSIFIED
(b) let any intelligence inaccuracy move us from confronting the WMD issue.
So we need:
To put ourselves in the right place on accepting some intelligence may have been wrong and letting that be looked into.
To get across what Kay and the ISG are actually saying.
To reassert the importance of the MWD question and remind people of the progress made.
DECLASSIFIED