INTERVIEW WITH JACK STRAW
UK FOREIGN SECRETARY

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

November 18, 2002

Excerpts

INTERVIEWER: The Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has described this as Saddam's final opportunity to satisfy the international community that Iraq is serious about disarmament. So as these weapons inspectors set off on their mission, you are of course, continuing preparations for war. You can't be very optimistic then can you?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: Well I am reasonably optimistic about the weapons inspectors and their work. But only because we are making the preparations for war. The simple fact of the matter is that we would never have got to this position, never, without the United States ourselves and others being resolute that unless Iraq complies with weapons inspectors going back in, then there will have to be military action taken to enforce the United Nations obligations. This is one of these cases, to quote Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, where you have to back sensitive diplomacy with a credible threat of force for the diplomacy to work.

INTERVIEWER: Well how optimistic are you? Can you put a percentage on it?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: No, I am not going to put a percentage on it. But the resolution that was passed by the United Nations unanimously, Resolution 1441, set out a very clear set of steps which Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime can easily take if they want to comply with international law; and bluntly, if they want life to go on as it has been in Iraq. So when we were negotiating the resolution, did this resolution just amount to a series of automatic triggers towards military action? Not a bit of it. [It amounts rather to establishing] sensible steps towards the readmission of these weapons inspectors and then their capacity, their ability to do the job. So our message to Saddam Hussein is that this is your final opportunity to comply with international law and the rule of the United Nations Security Council.

INTERVIEWER: What constitutes a material breach? Who defines it and what exactly could it be?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: Well I am not going to speculate about the precise circumstances of a material breach in advance. My guess is that when and if there is a material breach, it will be perfectly obvious whether it is sufficiently serious to justify military action or not.

INTERVIEWER: Will that come from Hans Blix and his team of weapons inspectors?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: There are a variety of ways under the structure of the United Nations resolution. What operational paragraph four spells out is that either a failure by Saddam properly to disclose his weapons of mass destruction or the means by which those can be manufactured or other failure to comply with the resolution constitutes a material breach.

INTERVIEWER: We know all that is in the resolution, but who then says that they are in breach of that?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: What then happens is that such a material breach or a suggestion of material breach can be reported to the Security Council either through the weapons inspectors under operational paragraph eleven or directly by members of the Security Council. One thing that is made very clear by the resolution is that where one of the members of the Security Council's weapons inspectors think there has been a material breach there will then be a discussion in the Security Council for the matter to be assessed. My guess is that we will not be arguing about marginal issues. I mean if the weapons inspectors are held up with traffic lights, given a parking ticket, plainly that is not a serious material breach.

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