INTERVIEW WITH JACK STRAW
UK FOREIGN SECRETARY

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

November 18, 2002

INTERVIEWER: Do you believe that the American Administration really does believe that for all the efforts of the arms inspectors that are beginning today, in the end they can't do the job with Saddam there?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: I think what the US Administration believes is what they voted for in UN Security Council resolution 1441 which is a clear process in the hope of securing the peaceful disarmament of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

INTERVIEWER: And do you think it's still a real hope?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: Yes I do. I mean I don't want to put a per centage on it, but I do believe there is a real hope. The ball is now in Saddam Hussein's court. Fourteen forty one was backed unanimously for a wide variety of reasons but not least because everybody around the table in the Security Council accepted that this set out a series of steps, a pathway to a peaceful resolution of this crisis not a series of automatic triggers.

INTERVIEWER: Do you mean it gave him an opportunity?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: Yes. Paragraph two of the resolution sets out that this is a final opportunity for Saddam Hussein to disarm peacefully his weapons of mass destruction. But for this to work of course it has to be backed by the credible threat of force.

INTERVIEWER: What confidence do you have that the apparatus available to the inspectors, human intelligence and technology, will find the stuff if it's there?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: I'm pretty confident about this. Yes, inspections the last time took a long time. But they did arrive at a substantial proportion of the truth. The truth was and is that four times as much biological and chemical weapons was destroyed by inspectors as was destroyed by the military action in the Gulf War in 1991, so in the end they did uncover large amounts of stocks.

In addition to this, if you look at the final report of the previous chemical and biological inspectors in early 1999, they set out in that report a list of all the nerve agents, precursor chemicals, mustard gas shells and so on which were still unaccounted for which they knew existed in Iraq but they'd had not been able to find.

In addition, under one of the key operational paragraphs of this Security Council resolution 1441, the Iraqi regime has twenty days to produce a full disclosure. And it's not just a disclosure of individual holdings of weapons and nuclear facilities, but of facilities, for example bio chemical works, which could be used to manufacture them.

INTERVIEWER: The point about the security resolution is that it gives Iraq an opportunity as you said, but it puts obligations on Iraq as well and it warns of serious consequences. What if twenty days from now the inspectors conclude that they haven't got the information that they should have got?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: Well, it's very straight forward. They will use the powers they have under the eleventh paragraph of the resolution to report to the Security Council. The Security Council under the twelfth paragraph will then meet to assess the situation and there may or may not be a second resolution.

INTERVIEWER: I wanted to ask you about a second resolution. Are you in favour of one in a circumstance like that?

FOREIGN SECRETARY: Well, I'm not going to speculate on that. What is known is that there were some parties to the Security Council who wished to include in this resolution a requirement that further action could only be determined by a subsequent resolution of the Security Council. Now, fifteen members of the Security Council, knowing that, decided to vote for a different resolution.

INTERVIEWER: We know the Americans don't believe a second resolution's necessary and they can do what they like if this falls apart.

FOREIGN SECRETARY: Our position is that we follow very clearly the Security Council procedures which include these final three paragraphs, eleven, twelve and then thirteen which makes it clear to Saddam Hussein that there will be serious consequences through a failure to comply. I'm not going to speculate about the exact circumstances of that subsequent Security Council meeting. Indeed I hope there isn't one. I hope that in practice Saddam Hussein does indeed comply.

INTERVIEWER: People have got a right to know, haven't they, how seriously you would take a breach of the first obligation.

FOREIGN SECRETARY: We will take any breach, any serious, significant, material breach, very seriously indeed. One of the reasons why I, throughout this, have been saying that the tougher we are up front the more likely there is to be a peaceful resolution of this, is because of the nature of the Saddam Hussein regime. [The regime] doesn't listen to reason, but it does react to the credible threat of force. And we have to maintain that credible threat of force throughout this diplomatic process of inspections.