Global Security Newswire

An independent panel examining the United Kingdom's involvement in the Iraq war today focused on prewar claims that the Hussein regime had weapons of mass destruction and links to the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 24).

During the second day of hearings in London, panel head John Chilcot asked two diplomatic officials about the British government's 2002 claim that Iraq could deploy biological or chemical weapons within 45 minutes.

No indications of active WMD programs or operational stockpiles have been found in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. The BBC has stated that the intelligence document that included the 45-minute statement had been "sexed up" to promote the invasion -- a claim rejected by the government in London.

Former British Foreign Office counterproliferation chief Tim Dowse said the 45-minute time line was not shocking at the time.

"When I saw the 45 minutes report, I didn't give it particular significance because it didn't seem out of line (with assessments at the time)," he told the panel.

Any such time period for use of chemical weapons would have involved battlefield deployment rather than their deployment against another country, officials told the inquiry. Iraq was known to have used chemical weapons in its 1980-88 war against Iran.

Two years before the invasion, Iran, Libya and North Korea were seen as greater threats for nuclear proliferation than Iraq, officials said. However, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's "history of aggression" was a cause for worry, they added.

Iraq was not seen as immediately likely to produce a nuclear weapon, Dowse said. However, there was a belief that Hussein would try to reconstitute his nation's nuclear program within five years, once freed of international sanctions, he added.

British officials believed Iraq had at one point been in contact with al-Qaeda, according to Dowse.

"We did find some evidence of contacts between Iraqi officials and individual members of al-Qaeda in the late 1990s," he said. "But the judgment we came to was that these had been quite sporadic contacts ... They hadn't been anything that looked like a relationship between the Iraqis and al-Qaeda."

Hussein's government "stepped further back" after al-Qaeda carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Dowse said.

Washington appeared to give more prominence to the possible connections, said William Ehrman, former international security head at the Foreign Office.

"They put more weight on some of the links ... than we did but our view was there was no evidence to suggest serious collaboration of any sort between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime," said Ehrman, now British ambassador to China.

This is the third British inquiry into the war. It is expected to consider the period between 2001 and 2009, and to question former Prime Minister Tony Blair and other top officials. A report is expected in late 2010 (Cyril Belaud, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Nov. 25).

Peter Ricketts, former chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, told the inquiry yesterday that Iraq was seen early this decade as seeking no less than a "breakout capability" that would allow it to quickly produce biological and chemical weapons, the Press Association reported.

"In 2001 we were seeing an acceleration of work on missile programs, we saw increased Iraq efforts to secure material for the nuclear program, and we saw continuing interest in CW (chemical weapons) research and development," he said (Matt Dickinson, Press Association, Nov. 25).

However, intelligence obtained shortly before the invasion indicated there was a limited WMD threat from Iraq, Ehrman said.

“We were getting in the very final days before military action some (intelligence) on chemical and biological weapons that they were dismantled and (Saddam) might not have the munitions to deliver it," he said.

“On March 10 we got a report saying that the chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and that Saddam hadn’t yet ordered their reassembly and he might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents," Ehrman added (Gordon Rayner, London Telegraph, Nov. 25).

Ricketts said London had in the years leading up to the invasion hoped to strengthen containment of Iraq, but that the Bush administration in the United States was looking for a different strategy for dealing with the rogue state, the Associated Press reported.

"We were conscious that there were other voices in Washington, some of whom were talking about regime change," said Ricketts, now Foreign Office permanent secretary.

The Blair administration ultimately provided 45,000 troops for the U.S.-led invasion. A total of 179 died before the United Kingdom ended its military operations in Iraq (Paisley Dodds, Associated Press/Boston Globe, Nov. 24).