The Paxman dossier: Blair's case for war

In his televised interview with Jeremy Paxman last week, the Prime Minister faced a largely hostile audience and a sceptical country and, 'in effect' as he might say, set out his arguments for action against Iraq. Here Andy McSmith analyses his key points

Tony Blair said: If we allow Iraq to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, it will threaten the entire region. There is no way that we would be able to exclude ourselves from any regional conflict there.

We say: Iraq's neighbours indeed have had good reason to feel threatened by its weapons, which is exactly why Saddam Hussein developed them, but the West was able to "exclude ourselves" during an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, which cost a million lives.

The truth is the inspectors were put out of Iraq.

No they weren't.

They were effectively thrown out. They came back to the United Nations and said we can't carry out the work as inspectors; therefore we said you must leave.

That's not the same thing.

It was only when people defected from the Iraqi regime and were interviewed that we discovered the full existence of their nuclear weapons and biological weapons programmes.

True.

What our intelligence services are telling us, and I've no doubt what American intelligence is telling President Bush as well, is that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

During his long presentation to the UN Security Council, Colin Powell produced copious evidence that the Iraqis have something which they don't want the inspectors to see, but scarcely any proof of what it was.

He used chemical weapons against the Iranians some years ago.

But during the Iran-Iraq war, British firms were covertly encouraged to sell weapons to the Iraqis.

He is the one power in this world that has actually used chemical weapons against his own people.

Yes, against the Kurds in 1988, but the British and other Western governments did nothing about it at the time, and have never supported the Kurds' demand for independence because it would threaten the stability of Turkey.

We were finding in the year 2001 that sanctions were no longer working properly. Around about $3bn was being leached away through illicit sales of oil.

Yes, but in 2001 Iraq had not threatened any of its neighbours for a decade.

If the inspectors report that they can't do their work properly because Iraq is not co-operating, that's a breach of the [UN] resolution. In those circumstances there should be a further resolution.

Contrast that with President Bush's assertion that UN resolution 1441 "gives us the authority to move without any second resolution" and that the US will resist "any attempt to drag the process on for months".

If a country unreasonably put down a veto, I would consider action outside of that.

The action in Kosovo was conducted without specific UN authorisation because the Russians threatened to use their veto. This is because of the ancients ties between Russians and Serbs. None of the five members of the Security Council has any similar relationship with Iraq, so it is difficult to see what "unreasonable" veto Mr Blair has in mind.

Chemical, biological and nuclear weapons are now increasingly easy to get hold of, with irresponsible, unstable states proliferating them. It is a matter of time before that comes together with international terrorism in a devastating way for this country and other countries. These are not separate threats. They're related and linked.

This is the crux of Mr Blair's argument that Saddam's weaponry affects us, not just Iraq's Middle Eastern neighbours. It seems a thin pretext for war: that materials which the Iraqis might be hiding from weapons inspectors might be handed to terrorist groups which might use them in the UK, particularly when Iraq has never been linked to any terrorist action in this country.

[Although] relations between al-Qa'ida and Saddam Hussein would not have been of any great historical importance, that is not to say in circumstances where Iraq faces a threat from possible military action and al-Qa'ida has also been subject to action pursued at international level they aren't coming together, and there is evidence that links the two.

Though it is often hinted at, there is no evidence that Iraq has been implicated in any al-Qa'ida atrocity. There is a profound ideological division between al-Qa'ida, who are Islamist extremists, and the secular Ba'ath party.

If we do have to come to military action in Iraq and remove Saddam, then I honestly believe the people who will rejoice first will be the Iraqis.

But neither the US nor the UK is going to war to liberate the Iraqi people. Tony Blair implied that Saddam can carry on persecuting his own people, so long as he gives up his weapons of mass destruction.

You can only go [to war], obviously, with the support of Parliament.

Yet the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, warned MPs on Thursday not to expect "a substantive vote" in the Commons before Britain goes to war because "it is obviously vital to retain the element of surprise if military operations become necessary".

And the woman who put him on the spot

Sometimes it helps to know exactly who the person is who has just asked you a difficult question.

Tony Blair struggled visibly to deal with a question from a woman in his Gateshead audience when she suggested it was "hypocritical" for the US and Britain to be demanding that Iraq rid itself of nuclear weapons, when we have no intention of destroying ours.

He could perhaps have handled the question more confidently if he had known that he was talking to the daughter of the physicist who told the British government how to build an atomic bomb.

Monica Frisch, a leading member of the Stop the War Coalition in Newcastle, told Mr Blair: "I'm totally opposed to anyone having or developing nuclear weapons – but that goes for British and American nuclear weapons. How can we justify criticising Iraq for developing nuclear weapons when we're doing so little to get rid of our own?"

Mr Blair replied uncomfortably that Britain has signed "a whole lot of agreements'' on nuclear arms, and rapidly changed the subject.

Ms Frisch's father was Dr Otto Frisch, a Viennese Jew who fled from the Nazis in the 1930s. He and another physicist demonstrated that uranium-235 was the ingredient which could be used in a weapon of almost unimaginable power. In 1943 Dr Frisch worked with the team that devised the Hiroshima bomb.

"He didn't go out and celebrate, as some of his colleagues did," Ms Frisch said. "He then became involved in the movement for responsibility in science."