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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 1 Oct 2003

Vol. 571 No. 2

Written Answers. - Foreign Conflicts.

Eamon Ryan

Ceist:

111 Mr. Eamon Ryan asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the evidence he had for claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; the intelligence sources he was relying on; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21149/03]

The Government based its approach to this issue on Security Council resolutions going back to 1991, in which the Security Council stated that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Ireland, and every member of the UN, is bound to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council. The Government did not rely on foreign intelligence sources. As late as November 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1441, which recognised the threat posed to international peace and security by Iraq's non-compliance with Council resolutions and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long range missiles. At the time when Security Council Resolution 1441 was adopted, the Security Council was acting in the belief that Iraq did possess weapons of mass destruction. This belief was very widely shared in the international community. The General Affairs Council of the EU at its meeting of 18-19 November 2002 could not have been more clear in stating its belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. This was despite the fact that there was disagreement among many member states about how to deal with the situation.

In his report of 6 March to the Security Council, Dr. Blix, head of UNMOVIC, the arms inspection team mandated to investigate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, said that many questions relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction remained unanswered. Whether or not these weapons still existed at the time, Iraq was in material breach of its disarmament obligations through its failure to co-operate fully with the arms inspectors in carrying out their mandate of verifying that Iraq no longer held weapons of mass destruction.

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