Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 July 2004
111 Mr. Gormley asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs the credence which was placed on a dossier (details supplied) by the Government; the way in which Ireland’s behaviour as a member of the UN Security Council was affected by this; and the reason the Government continued, realising the baseless and biased nature of the allegations contained in that dossier, to use that material to promote a patently lawless attack against the Republic of Iraq. [20945/04]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe contents of the British dossier in question had no bearing on the Government's position in relation to the threat posed by Iraq or on Ireland's behaviour as a member of the United Nations Security Council. The Government did not rely on UK or US intelligence sources.
In arriving at a position on the threat posed by Iraq, the Government, like most governments around the world, was guided by a number of factors. First, the hard evidence that Iraq had at one time been in possession of chemical weapons and had used them both in its war with Iran and against its own people. Second, that it had sought to develop nuclear weapons capability. Third, that it had persistently defied the demands of the Security Council that it verifiably dismantle its WMD capabilities. Fourth, that it refused to co-operate fully with UN weapons inspectors. Finally, that the UN inspectors were not satisfied that Iraq had accounted for its stocks of WMD. I reiterate that the Government did not base its position on intelligence provided by the either the US or the UK.
At the time when Security Council Resolution 1441 was unanimously 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 stated three times in the clearest terms 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. The fact remains that, 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. War could have been averted if Saddam Hussein had co-operated fully with the arms inspectors mandated by the UN Security Council. Saddam Hussein was manifestly unwilling to do this. He began to offer minimal, but still thoroughly unsatisfactory, co-operation only when military pressure started to mount.
I totally reject any assertion that the Government promoted an attack against the Republic of Iraq. We in fact worked at the Security Council to avert it. We also decided that Ireland would not participate in the coalition's proposed military action against Iraq. A motion to endorse the Government's approach was approved by this House on 20 March 2003.
