- Transcripts of a private conversation between Jack Straw
and Colin Powell expressing serious doubts about the reliability of intelligence
on Iraq's banned weapons programme are being circulated in western government
circles where there is a growing feeling that officials were deceived into
supporting the Iraq war.
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- A document known as the "Waldorf transcripts"
- after the New York hotel where the US secretary of state was staying
before making a crucial speech to the UN security council earlier this
year - is described by an official of one Nato country as "extremely
useful".
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- The description is used in a paper seen by the Guardian
as part of an effort among Nato allies to "rein in some of the less
acceptable policies of the Bush administration".
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- Mr Straw yesterday denied he had had a private meeting
with Mr Powell on February 4, the eve of the security council meeting where
Mr Powell gave a dramatic presentation of intelligence material purporting
to reveal hard evidence that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons.
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- The foreign secretary said he did not arrive in New York
until the day of the crucial security council meeting.
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- Diplomatic sources remain adamant, as the Guardian reported
on Saturday, that Mr Straw did have a private conversation with Mr Powell
in which both men expressed their concerns about the quality of the intelligence
they had been given and how it was being used to bolster their governments'
case for war against Iraq.
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- The Guardian reported how a meeting between the two men
took place at the Waldorf Astoria hotel shortly before the key security
council meeting. On Saturday, the Foreign Office insisted "no such
meeting" took place.
-
- Yesterday the foreign secretary was asked on the BBC's
Breakfast with Frost Programme if there was "any truth to this: did
you in January or February have any conversation with the secretary of
state where you shared your doubts about the strength or probability of
the evidence for the claims you were both making about Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction? Did you have any such conversation?"
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- Mr Straw replied: "Let me deal with that. No I didn't
about the quality of the evidence. What is the case is that I've always
been very anxious to test the evidence and so, I know, was [Colin] Powell
and President Bush and our prime minister, Tony Blair."
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- The "Waldorf transcripts" document being distributed
among Nato capitals raises new questions about Mr Straw's denials. It is
being circulated amid a flurry of leaks in Washington about Mr Powell's
concerns about how intelligence was being used to try to persuade reluctant
Nato allies - notably France and Germany - to sanction an attack on Iraq.
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- Tony Blair has promised to publish a new dossier on Iraq's
past weapons of mass destruction programme. But it is a prospect the intelligence
services, already caught up in the political row over claims that Downing
Street doctored their earlier evidence, do not relish.
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- British intelligence agencies cannot substantiate claims
that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons when US and
UK forces invaded Iraq, senior Whitehall officials admitted yesterday.
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- Any dossier published now would be "half-baked and
inaccurate", a well-placed source told the Guardian.
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- "There was a consensus the Iraqis were up to something.
We know they had a programme of deception. We can't substantiate it now."
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- Intelligence sources said it would take "weeks,
if not two or three months" to come up with what they called a "credible"
assessment.
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- British and American intelligence sources say they were
expecting Iraqi forces to use chemical or biological weapons against UK
and US troops - a tactic which, however horrendous, would, they say, at
least have proved they had such weapons.
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,968603,00.html
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