Global Security Newswire

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has said he believes Prime Minister Tony Blair knew shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom that Iraq probably did not possess usable weapons of mass destruction, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 30).

In excerpts from Cook’s diary published yesterday in the London Sunday Times, the former leader of the House of Commons described a conversation he had with Blair on March 5, two weeks before the war, according to AP. Cook wrote that he had asked Blair if he was concerned that Iraq would use chemical weapons against British troops.

Cook wrote that Blair had said, “Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use.”

Cook also wrote in his diary that his conversation with Blair disturbed him because it suggested that the decision to go to war was not based on the result of U.N. weapons inspections and because Blair had not attempted to counter Cook’s claims that Iraq did not possess long-range weapons of mass destruction.

Blair’s office has rejected Cook’s claims, AP reported.

“The idea that the prime minister ever said that [former Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction is absurd,” a Blair spokesman said. “His views have been consistent throughout, both publicly and privately, as his cabinet colleagues know,” the spokesman said (Michael McDonough, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Oct. 5).

Cook’s diary excerpts could add to Blair’s political woes, according to BBC News. 

Cook’s comments, along with the recent report from the Iraq Survey Group saying no weapons of mass destruction have yet been found in Iraq, could “make for a torrid autumn for the prime minister,” said Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrat Party.

“If these allegations are true they are explosive,” Campbell said.

Former British Culture Secretary Chris Smith agreed that Cook’s diary excerpts could damage Blair politically.

“If he [Blair] keeps on insisting, without any sort of qualification at all, that he was right all along and we did the right thing and we haven’t learnt any lessons from what we now know, then I fear that the electoral water is going to continue to be very choppy for him,” Smith said (BBC News, Oct. 5).

Iraqi Scientists Attacked After Cooperating With United StatesMeanwhile, two Iraqi weapons scientists were attacked after talking with U.S. officials involved in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported yesterday.

Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said Friday that one Iraqi scientist who cooperated with the Iraq Survey Group was killed in an apparent assassination. A second scientist who cooperated was seriously injured in a separate attack, Kay said (Larry Kaplow, Cox/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 5).