STATEMENT BY MIKE O'BRIEN
UK FOREIGN OFFICE MINISTER

UK FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

October 31, 2002

Excerpts

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IRAQ

I want to turn to Iraq, because fighting terrorism does not excuse us from our responsibilities and challenges elsewhere. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock said, it is important that we deal with the threat of terrorism as well as the issue of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. The Security Council is working intensively on a new draft resolution on Iraq. Our objective is the complete disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction by peaceful means; ensuring that that takes place lies in the hands of Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

In 1991, following the Gulf War, the Security Council set out the conditions governing the ceasefire. More than 11 years later, Iraq remains in breach of its obligations. Iraq's unrelenting efforts to frustrate inspections and intimidate inspectors are well known. Those efforts are underlined by the testimony in August 1998 of the then head of the United Nations Special Commission, in which he said that he found it impossible to do his job, by Iraq's succession of increasingly implausible and supposedly final declarations after inspectors discovered some new incriminating fact, or evidence, by the unaccounted-for weapons of mass destruction and by the multiple warnings that have been sent to Iraq by the Security Council in successive resolutions and statements.

Iraq could, at any time, have invited the inspectors back without conditions attached. Sanctions could have been lifted and Iraq would have been restored to normal. It is only Baghdad's insistence on retaining its weapons of mass destruction that has blocked that. It was only under intense diplomatic pressure and, particularly, the threat of military action that Iraq offered, on 16 September, to readmit the inspectors. That offer, while necessary, is not enough.

Even now, Iraq believes that it can hide its weapons of mass destruction, rather than declare them, and that it can fool the inspectors again. Our dossier on Iraq spells out that it still possesses chemical and biological materials, continues to produce them, has sought to weaponise them and has active plans for their deployment. Iraq has, in recent years, tried to buy multiple components that are relevant to the production of a nuclear bomb, retained extended-range missiles and employed hundreds of people to develop missiles with a range of more than 1000 km.

It would be an abdication of responsibility to ignore Iraq's defiance of the international community and international law. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend that the problem does not exist. We cannot accept Saddam's word at face value, knowing what we know. We are, therefore, working to ensure that the Security Council expresses very clearly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock said, a strong message that Saddam cannot continue to develop weapons of mass destruction. Saddam must comply with international law and we must ensure that we have a resolution that sends the clear message to him that the development of weapons of mass destruction must stop.