INTERVIEW WITH JACK STRAW
U.K. FOREIGN SECRETARY

UK FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

April 25, 2003

QUESTION: Can we talk about Tariq Aziz first? He wasn't terribly high up on the list of wanted men, but quite important I imagine for the information he might have.

JACK STRAW: Yes, obviously you never know what information people might have until they're actually interviewed. As you say he's number forty three on the list. He was one of the most well known faces of Saddam's Iraq because of his good English and the fact that he appeared plausible and he had been Foreign Minister, the information we had was that his later position as a kind of Deputy Prime Minister was a rather honorific position. Even so, it's good that he has handed himself over. It is also good that of the total of fifty or so most wanted people we've now got about a dozen, the coalition has in custody. And they should provide some important information about the nature of the regime.

QUESTION: But still no sign of Saddam or the sons. I mean Geoff Hoon seemed to think when he was in Iraq that he is hiding there somewhere. Can we add anything to that?

JACK STRAW: I can't add anything about this I'm afraid. Proving where this man is is very difficult. My guess would be that he would be in Iraq since he is a fairly well known face and it would be extremely hard for him to go to some other country. But we can't say. There was information and there were reports overnight from Washington suggesting this, that he was definitely at the site which was bombed early on in the military action and was appeared to be wounded and I'd certainly heard that before, but I think it's entirely a matter of speculation until we get final proof.

What we also know however and I'm interested to see the reports in the newspapers about this is that people in Iraq remain so scared of this man that until they have definite proof of what has happened to him some of them are still very anxious that he might return and restart the reign of terror under which they lived for two and a half decades.

QUESTION: Well now what about weapons of mass destruction, something else that has not been found. Robin Cook said he was perplexed by this whole thing and finds it difficult to believe that if they did possess the capacity then it's odd that it hasn't been found.

JACK STRAW: Well Robin is a good friend of mine. I'm surprised that he has such perplexity. Let's take this back. The first thing is what was the evidence for the possession by the Saddam regime of weapons of mass destruction? Well it was that they had used chemical weapons, that they had built up a great capacity to make and had made biological weapons. That didn't emerge for four years, despite the most intensive pretty aggressive searches by the previous inspectors UNSCOM. It wasn't until one of Saddam's own family, his son-in-law, defected that we found out anything at all about this biological weapons programme and that was after a four year period.

But what is important to point out is that the whole of the international community accepted that Saddam had these weapons and they posed a threat and that was why in one of the opening paragraphs of resolution 1441 which was passed fifteen zero by the Security Council last November, Security Council said that bearing in mind the threat posed to international peace and security by the Government Iraq from its failure to fulfil United Nations obligations its unlawful possession of missile systems and its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. So this wasn't a matter of speculation.

QUESTION: Yeah, the question is not whether he had ever had any which he clearly had and whether he was doing any work on any which he presumably was. The question was whether the extent of that to us specifically justified an attack. And on the basis of one fact alone that is that he didn't use them against us it rather suggests that we over stated the threat.

JACK STRAW: With great respect I don't think we over stated the threat and it was because the threat was well known to entirely independent members of the Security Council that they unanimously concluded that the possession and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by the Saddam regime quotes posed a threat to international peace and security.

QUESTION: Is it not odd that Geoff Hoon should say as he did on this programme yesterday that there's no reason the United Nations should be involved searching for weapons of mass destruction?

JACK STRAW: Well look so, so far as searches is concerned Geoff was actually saying not much more than that which Dr Blix told the Security Council on Tuesday. He said it was evident the situation in Iraq remained one where civilian inspections could not operate and some of the assumptions on which the Council had established UNMOVIC had changed. He then went on, the coalition authorities would be as eager as UNMOVIC to find weapons of mass destruction and many Iraqis would now be more likely to tell them what they knew. Now, what I hope very much is that we can ensure that the United Nations has that vital role that President Bush and our Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke about at the Camp David summit and that would include an important role for UNMOVIC.

QUESTION: So will they definitely go back?

JACK STRAW: Well the reason that I have to express hopes rather than saying definitely things will happen is because these things depend on decisions of the Security Council which will have to be taken in the round.

QUESTION: Right, well let me move on from that to North Korea. Now here is a country that we know has nuclear weapons and which poses an infinitely greater threat than Iraq ever did. Can we therefore assume that we will attack North Korea in the way we attacked Iraq?

JACK STRAW: No and I hope that nobody does, because we have in no sense exhausted diplomatic processes here.

QUESTION: So how long we going to give North Korea?

JACK STRAW: Well my view is we should be very patient indeed. There have been many threats from North Korea, many of them have not actually been fulfilled. The good news is that there is now an architecture by which North Korea and the United States are in negotiations under the auspices of negotiations led by China. Let us hope that these can proceed. The one thing I'm quite clear about is that there is nobody in the Korean peninsula on either side of it who's going to benefit from any kind of nuclear arms race and that every country in that region and particularly Russia, China and Japan as well as the two Koreas want there to be a stable North Korea able to live in peace and harmony with its neighbours and it's in the interests of all those countries and the United States to ensure that that can happen.