| | MIN. JACK STRAW (foreign minister,
U.K.): Mr. President, may I, like the foreign minister for China, congratulate
Germany on taking the presidency of the Security Council, and congratulate you
personally on assuming the chair this morning.
Mr. President, we've just
heard a most powerful and authoritative case against the Iraqi regime set out
by United States Secretary of State Powell. The international community
owes him its thanks for laying bare the deceit practiced by the regime of Saddam
Hussein and, worse, the very great danger which that regime represents.
Three months ago, we united to send Iraq an uncompromising message: Cooperate
fully with weapons inspectors or face disarmament by force. After years of Iraqi
deception, when resolutions were consistently flouted, Resolution 1441 was a powerful
reminder of the importance of international law and of the authority of the Security
Council itself.
United and determined, we gave Iraq a final opportunity
to rid itself of its weapons of mass terror: of gases which can poison thousands
in one go; of bacilli and viruses like anthrax and smallpox, which can disable
and kill by the tens of thousands; of the means to make nuclear weapons, which
can kill by the millions.
By Resolution 1441, we strengthened inspections
massively. The only missing ingredient was full Iraqi compliance: immediate, full
and active cooperation. The truth is, and we all know this, without that full
and active cooperation, however strong the inspectors' powers, however good the
inspectors, inspections in a country as huge as Iraq could never be sure of finding
all Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Now Mr. President, sadly, the
inspectors' reports last week and Secretary Powell's presentation today can leave
us under no illusions about Saddam Hussein's response. Saddam Hussein holds United
Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 in the same contempt as all previous
resolutions in respect of Iraq.
Let us reflect on what that means, for
Saddam is defying every one of us, every nation here represented. He questions
our resolve and is gambling that we will lose our nerve rather than enforce our
will.
Paragraph 1 of 1441 said that Saddam was and remained in material
broach of Security Council resolutions. Paragraph 4 of 1441 then set two clear
tests for a further material breach by Iraq. First, that Iraq must not make false
statements or omissions in his declaration. But the Iraqi document submitted to
us on the 7th of December, as we've heard from Secretary Powell, was long on repetition
but short on
fact.
It was neither full nor accurate nor complete.
And by anyone's definition, it was a false statement.
Its central premise
-- that Iraq possesses no weapons of mass destruction -- is a lie. This outright
lie was repeated yesterday on television by Saddam Hussein.
And the declaration
also has obvious omissions, not least in the failure to explain what has happened
to the large quantities of chemical and biological weapons material and munitions
unaccounted for by U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998.
And there is no admission
of Iraq's extensive efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction since the last
round of UNSCOM inspections ended in December 1998.
Mr. President, Paragraph
4 goes on to set a second test for a further material breach, namely, and I quote,
"a failure by Iraq at any time to comply with and to cooperate fully in the
implementation of Resolution 1441."
Following the presentation by
the inspectors last week and
today's briefing by Secretary Powell, it is clear
that Iraq has failed this test. These briefings have confirmed our worst fears
that Iraq has no intention of relinquishing its weapons of mass destruction, no
intention of following the path of peaceful disarmament set out in Security Council
Resolution 1441. Instead of open admissions and transparency, we have a
charade where a veneer of superficial cooperation masks willful concealment, the
extent of which has been
devastatingly revealed this morning by Secretary
Powell.
Mr. President, in his report last week, Dr. Blix set out a number
of instances where Iraqi behavior reveals a determination to avoid compliance.
Why is Iraq refusing to allow UNMOVIC to use a U-2 plane to conduct aerial imagery
and surveillance operations? When will Iraq
account for the 6,500 bombs which
could carry up to a thousand tons of chemical agent? How will Iraq justify having
a prohibited chemical precursor for mustard gas? And how will Iraq explain the
concealment of nuclear documents and the development of a missile program, in
clear contravention of United Nations resolutions?
And there is, Mr.
President, only one possible conclusion from all of this, which is that Iraq is
in further material breach as set out in the United Nations Security Council Resolution
1441. And I believe that all colleagues here, all members, will share our deep
sense of frustration that Iraq is choosing to spurn this final opportunity to
achieve a peaceful outcome.
Mr. President, given what has to follow and
the difficult choice now facing us, it would be easy to turn a blind eye to the
wording of Resolution 1441 and hope for a change of heart by Iraq. Easy, but wrong.
Because if we did so, we would be repeating the mistakes of the past 12 years
and empowering a dictator who believes that his diseases and poison gases are
essential weapons to suppress his own
people and to threaten his neighbors,
and that by defiance of the United Nations, he can indefinitely hoodwink the world.
Mr. President, under the French presidency two weeks ago, we had a special
session on the dangers of international terrorism -- which I greatly welcomed
that session -- of the grave danger to the world of terrorists acquiring weapons
of mass destruction through the connivance of rogue states. Secretary Powell has
today set out deeply worrying reports about the presence in Iraq of one of Osama
bin Laden's lieutenants, al-Zarqawi (ph) and other members of al-Qaida and their
efforts to develop poisons. It defies imagination that all of this could be going
on without the knowledge of Saddam Hussein, and the recent discovery of the poison
ricin in London has underlined again that this is a threat which all of us face.
Mr. President, Saddam must be left in no doubt as to the serious consequences
and the serious situation which he now faces. The United Kingdom does not want
war. What we want is for the United Nations system to be upheld. But the logic
of Resolution 1441 is inescapable.
Time is now very short. This council
will have further reports from the inspectors on Friday week, the 14th of February.
If non-cooperation continues, this council must meet its responsibilities.
Mr. President, our world faces many threats, from poverty and disease to
civil war and terrorism. Working through this great institution, we have the capacity
to tackle these challenges together. But if we are to do so, then the decisions
we have to take must have a force beyond mere words. This is a moment of choice
for Saddam and for the Iraqi regime. But it also a moment of choice for this institution,
the United Nations.
The United Nations pre-war predecessor, the League
of Nations, had the same fine ideals as the United Nations. but the League failed
because it could not create actions from its words; it could not back diplomacy
with a credible threat, and where necessary, the use of force. So small evils
went unchecked. Tyrants became emboldened. Then greater evils were unleashed.
At each stage, good men said, "Wait, the evil is not big enough to challenge."
Then, before their
eyes, the evil became too big to challenge. We slipped
slowly down a slope, never noticing how far we'd gone until it was too late.
Mr. President, we owe it to our history, as well as to our future, not to
make the same mistake again. | |
