PMOS afternoon briefing - 3 June Page 1 of 1

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10 DOWNING 51'Iif.6T

PRESS BRIEFING : 3.45PM TUESDAY 3 JUNE 2003

IRAQIWMD

Asked if the Intelligence and Security Committee expected the Prime Minister to announce an inquiry by them tomorrow in
the House, the PMOS said that the Committee was obviously important and the Government valued the oversight role
they played in this area Given its remit, people shouldn't be too surprised if the Committee already had this issue in hand
Unlike other Committees, they did not tend to make announcements in the same way about their work or provide a
running commentary on it, given its unique and sensitive nature . We would have to wait for tomorrow Asked if the
Committee decided its work programme or was asked by the Government to look at issues, the PMOS said that it would
depend Following the terrorist atrocity in Bali, for example, we had asked the Committee to carry out an investigation it
went without saying that there was a dialogue between them and the Government in relation to intelligence issues and any
other matter they might wish to look at Asked if the Prime Minister would use his Statement on the G8 Summit in the
House tomorrow to clarify what sort of inquiry the Committee might undertake, the PMOS said that discussions had been
continuing between the Government and the Committee The picture might become clearer m due course He could not
say a huge amount more today

Asked if the Committee's report would be censored and intelligence blacked out before it was published, the PMOS said
that as we had underlined from the outset, the dossier had been based on intelligence which had not been 'got up' either
by politicians or the intelligence community The evidence had not been doctored or invented If people wanted to accept
a version of events from an anonymous source which had been dripped into this particular debate and which went against
everything we had been saying, there wasn't a lot we could do about it There were obvious common sense reasons why
reports from the Committee were redacted in order to protect intelligence sources It would be odd if they weren't Put to
him that this might not persuade anyone, the PMOS said that the test concerning the whole issue of WMD would be the
evidence which would be brought forward in due course The Prime Minister had said many times over the past few days
that he was totally confident of the case we had been mounting It was not unreasonable to ask people to exercise a little
patience Equally, given the strictures which Saddam had visited on his own country, there was a huge job to do there
regarding humanitarian and reconstruction work Quite understandably, that was where we were focussing our attention at
to be
the moment Of course that was not to suggest that the issue of WMD was not important and did not need
addressed On the contrary However, it was not our top priority at this time It was clear that a lot of people had very
strong views about the conflict Many had made a number of doomsday predictions about the consequences if we went to
war They had suggested, for example, that the Middle East peace process wouldn't get off the ground, that the Arabs
the
street would rise up, that we would never take Baghdad, that we would get bogged down in Iraq for years and that
these had come to pass There was a process to be gone through An
Coalition forces wouldn't be welcomed None of
and many
international survey team was due to start work in Iraq shortly. Obviously there would be many sites to visit
people to talk to - hence the need for people to be patient We lived in a world where answers were required immediately
the
However, things did not work that way in reality The WMD dossier had been produced on the basis of material from
and their judgements. No one had doctored anything As the Prime
Joint Intelligence Committee It had been their work
to
Minister had said in an interview on Sunday, there was no doubt that Saddam had had WMD and had been continuing
manufacture them . If that hadn't been the case, what had been the point of the numerous UN Resolutions relating to him
and his continuing defiance of them?

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