Brit diplomat says they knew WMD claims were 'totally implausible'

[JohnyCanuck]

WMD claims were 'totally implausible'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday June 20, 2005
The Guardian

A key Foreign Office diplomat responsible for liaising with UN inspectors says today that claims the government made about Iraq's weapons programme were "totally implausible".

He tells the Guardian: "I'd read the intelligence on WMD for four and a half years, and there's no way that it could sustain the case that the government was presenting. All of my colleagues knew that, too".

Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the UN in New York during the run-up to the invasion, resigned from the FO last year, after giving evidence to the Butler inquiry.

He thought about publishing his testimony because he felt so angry. But he was warned that if he did he might be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.

More at:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1510259,00.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. kick

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. He was interviewed in "Iraq, Tony and the Truth" (March 2005)

WARE: In New York at Britain's UN mission the diplomat responsible for Iraq had no idea No.10 was now committed to helping the Americans overthrow Saddam. In meetings with other diplomats he was still promoting British policy towards Iraq as being the containment of any threat through sanctions and weapons inspections.

CARNE ROSS
First Secretary, UK Mission to the UN
1998-2002
This is what we were instructed to say. The public argument was of course that it was illegal. You can't just go around and topple governments you don’t like, that's not legal, and that's what we would say in the UN because the UN is a place of law and of rules. But privately what we would discuss with our allies was that we thought it was a bad idea because we thought it would be destabilising and could potentially lead to chaos in Iraq.

WARE: He must have felt, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a prat, I mean talking to the State Department promoting one policy when in fact presumably people in the State Department knew jolly well that the part of the government.. the British Government that really mattered, namely Downing Street, was promoting a completely… was signed up anyway to a totally different policy.

ROSS: Yes, I think that's more or less right.
...
WARE: Is it your view now, then looking back, that the British government had, for all practical purposes, signed up to regime change which of course was driving unambiguously the United States.

ROSS: I don’t know that but I believe it.

WARE: You do believe it?

ROSS: Yes. If they really believed in disarmament as the goal, then inspections would have been allowed to continue. I think it's pretty clear, looking back, that the military timetable drove the diplomatic timetable.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/iraqtonyandthetruth.txt