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Blix Believed Iraq Dossier Was 'Understated'
By Gavin Cordon, Whitehall Editor, PA News
Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believed the Government’s controversial Iraq weapons dossier actually understated the case against Saddam Hussein, according to documents released today by the Foreign Office.
The papers released by the FO show that British officials at the United Nations in New York showed a draft of the dossier to Dr Blix in September 2002, two weeks before the final version was published.
A note from one official, Adam Bye, said that Dr Blix had liked the section on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons as he believed that it did not exaggerate the facts.
According to the note, Dr Blix said that the dossier even risked understating Iraq’s ability to produce weapons of mass destruction – particularly the lethal anthrax virus.
He also described the claim that even if Iraq was able to acquire fissile material from abroad, it would still take at least two years to build a working nuclear bomb as “modest”.
Since war, Dr Blix has strongly criticised the case made for war by Britain and the United States, based on Saddam Hussein’s supposed possession of illegal WMD.
However, in a Commons statement, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that at the time the dossier was published, the assumption that Iraq did indeed have WMD was shared across the international community.
In his note, sent to Mr Straw’s office, Mr Bye said: “On the whole, Blix liked section 6 (on WMD) – he felt it did not exaggerate the facts, nor revert to rhetoric, probably both desirable for its credibility.
“Blix felt that more evidence of illegal procurement activities would have been good – this was the sort of activity/evidence that most impressed him when reading WMD reports (Blix is of course a more sophisticated reader than most).
“Blix also thought that the section risked understating Iraq’s indigenous capacity to produce WMD (ie meaning that, even if it held low stocks of WMD, it could quickly produce more).
“Specific mention of anthrax might be particularly worthwhile in this respect – Unmovic (the UN weapons inspectors) believed this was an area where Iraq had very likely maintained indigenous capability (though Unmovic had not said so in public, nor was the case totally watertight).”
Under “additional thoughts”, Mr Bye noted that Dr Blix regarded the assessment in the dossier of the time it would take for Iraq to build a nuclear bomb as “modest”.
“Blix believed the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) had, at the time, assessed Iraq could complete a nuclear bomb within a year. While Iraq had trouble putting together a missile (mismatch between the size of the bomb and size of the missile) a bomb could have been delivered by plane,” he wrote.
Mr Bye said Dr Blix also regarded the section on Iraq’s chemical weapons capacity as “modest” and he had not challenged the claim in the dossier that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from the African state of Niger.
“He thought we should be clear that such uranium was not weapons usable without enrichment (no small feat). However it was illegal for Iraq to buy it,” Mr Bye wrote.
However Dr Blix did challenge claims in the dossier that aluminium pipes acquired by Iraq were for the purpose of uranium enrichment and that castor oil resin could be used by the Iraqis to create a battlefield weapon.
The comments by Dr Blix were made before UN weapons inspectors were able to re-enter Iraq and see for themselves conditions on the ground.
However they will be seen by the Foreign Office as further corroboration for their view that at the time the dossier was published, the view that Iraq had WMD was widely shared across the international community.