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Chemical attack 45min Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.thisislondon.com/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=704483&in_review_text_id=678220http://www.thisislondon.com/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=704483&in_review_text_id=678220
45 minutes from chemical attack
by Charles Reiss, Political Editor, Evening Standard
Saddam Hussein's armoury of chemical weapons is on standby for use within 45 minutes, Tony Blair's dossier revealed today.
The Iraqi leader has 20 missiles which could reach British military bases in Cyprus, as well as Israel and Nato members Greece and Turkey.
He has also been seeking to buy uranium from Africa for use in nuclear weapons. Those are the key charges in a 14-point "dossier of death" finally published by the Government today.
In an introduction, Mr Blair says that the evidence leaves Britain and the international community no choice but to act.
The central charges against Saddam are set out at the start of the document. They include:
• Plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, some deployable within 45 minutes.
• Evidence he has retained up to 20 al-Hussein missiles from the Gulf War. These could be used with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads and with a range of 650 kilometres, could reach "the UK sovereign base areas in Cyprus and Nato members Greece and Turkey as well as all Iraq's neighbours".
• Evidence he has "sought significant amounts of uranium from Africa".
• Work to extend the range of the al-Samud liquid propellant missile to at least 200 kilometres.
These and the other charges are amplified in the 55-page dossier. The Prime Minister's foreword says: "I believe that, faced with the information available to me, the United Kingdom government has been right to support the demand that this issue is confronted and dealt with.
"We must ensure that he [Saddam] does not get to use the weapons he has, or get hold of the weapons he wants."
Critics, however, said that the dossier - entitled Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Assessment of the British Government - failed to produce a new "killer fact" to justify all-out war to topple Saddam.
Some defence experts also acknowledged that much of the information was already known.
Mr Blair, however, says that the document, based on the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the heart of the British intelligence machine, demonstrates that the Iraqi regime is "a current and serious threat to the UK national interest".
The dossier goes further - to document Iraq's human rights abuses, with horrific individual accounts of tortures and mass executions. It also uses extraordinary means to show the almost farcical lengths to which Saddam has gone to hide the evidence of his weapons programme.
The report includes a map of one of the dictator's "presidential palaces", from which UN weapons inspectors have always been barred on the grounds that they are Saddam's private homes.
The map shows an area of just one of the "palaces" with the total area of Buckingham Palace and its grounds superimposed as a white blob. It shows that the Queen's London home and its grounds would fit comfortably into a tiny corner of one of Saddam's properties.
The dossier says that Iraq has developed mobile military laboratories to assist the use of nerve gas or chemical agents to maximum effect and with maximum speed.
It continues: "Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so."
It suggests that, without the necessary-weapons grade uranium, Iraq is five years away from producing its own nuclear bomb. It acknowledges that if the material could be obtained, that time span would narrow sharply to as little as 12 months.
It says that since the weapons inspectors left in 1998 "there has been an accumulation of intelligence indicating that Iraq is making concerted covert efforts to acquire dual use technology and materials with nuclear applications ... there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Earlier, as MPs assembled for today's one-day emergency debate, Labour dissidents warned it would take more than a recital of Saddam's past misdeeds to convince them. MP and former minister Glenda Jackson said the document must provide "contemporary, verifiable evidence that Saddam Hussein is a clear, present danger". Otherwise, she made clear, she and scores of others would rise in mass revolt against any move to military action to topple the regime.
Tonight's vote, at 10pm, will be on a technical move to adjourn the debate but even so up to 60 Labour MPs are threatening to rebel. The latest opinion-poll carried a warning for Mr Blair of a similar mood among the voters. The ICM poll in The Guardian showed 46 per cent against toppling the Iraq regime by force, up six points on a week ago, with 37 per cent in favour, up one point. The survey suggests, though, that public opinion is still "soft" on the issue with the argument open to be won.
Trouble in the Cabinet appeared to have been defused for the time being, however, after a session of almost two hours last night. All concerned were said to have accepted the policy of "containing" Saddam had failed and he had to be stopped. One of the Cabinet's two leading doves, International Development Secretary Clare Short, emerged to say: "We had a good discussion. We all agreed."
Ms Short had held a 20-minute private meeting with Mr Blair beforehand. The other most prominent soft-liner, Leader of the Commons Robin Cook, also let it be known that he had no intention of resigning.
Iraq said today that the government dossier was "baseless".
"Mr Blair is acting as part of the Zionist campaign against Iraq and all his claims are baseless," Iraqi culture minister Hamed Yousif Hummadi said.
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