Downing Street Says » 2004

» Friday, February 6, 2004

Libya

Asked if the Prime Minister would be meeting the Libyan Foreign Minister, the PMOS said yes. He was due to meet him next Tuesday. Asked if the Prime Minister would announce plans to meet Colonel Gaddafi after the meeting, the PMOS said that he was not aware of any plans to do so, as things stood. Asked if any Downing Street officials were participating in talks today between Libyan and US officials, the PMOS said not as far as he was aware. The British Government and US Administration had worked extremely closely on this issue through a very large part of last year. As we moved on to a different stage, that work and level of co-operation would continue.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

WMD/45 Minutes

Asked if the Prime Minister would clarify the position on what he had known about WMD and the 45-minute claim, the PMOS said he thought that the British public were ready to nod-off within 45 seconds of a decision being taken to broadcast or write another story about this matter. He did not think we could have been any more fulsome in our explanation yesterday about the issue. The key point was the Prime Minister's belief that Saddam had had a capability - both long range and battlefield. Whilst the 45-minutes point clearly gave precision to the state of readiness, it was perhaps less important to people within range of those munitions to know how quickly they could be deployed than whether they could actually reach them. That was the central point in all this.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Europe

Asked if the issue of the EU Budget would be on the agenda at the Prime Minister's meeting in Berlin with Chancellor Schroeder and President Chirac the week after next, the PMOS said that as he understood it, the European Commission would be publishing some proposals on the future financing of the EU next week. No doubt the three leaders would discuss the full range of European issues which affected EU members states, financial and otherwise. Asked if the Government remained committed to keeping the lid on expenditure after the Accession countries joined the EU, the PMOS said that the position had not changed.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (10)

» Thursday, February 5, 2004

WMD/45 Minutes

Asked the Prime Minister's reaction to Robin Cook's comments yesterday regarding what he had known about the 45-minute claim, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that the Prime Minister's recollection of his conversation with Mr Cook last March was that they had not discussed the 45-minute point nor the issue of strategic/battlefield WMD. Rather, they had talked about the threat to UK troops from battlefield WMD. The PMOS also took the opportunity to remind journalists that Mr Cook had not mentioned the 45-minute point in his resignation speech because it had not been an issue at that point. Despite the lengthy clarifications and explanations at this morning's briefing, it was still being reported at lunchtime today that, because the 45 minutes referred to battlefield munitions, the Government had not believed that there was a threat from long range missiles. That was simply not the case. It was not a question of either or. The Government believed there had been a threat from both, as described on page 22 of the Dossier relating to Iraq's capability to deploy chemical and biological weapons through al-Hussein ballistic missiles which had a range of 650km, for example. It was important for people to recognise that the long-range capability claim had never rested on the 45-minutes intelligence.

Briefing took place at 15:45 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Northern Ireland

The PMOS informed journalists that the Prime Minister would be meeting Ian Paisley this morning. The meeting should be viewed in the context of the review, which had begun on Tuesday, on how to move forward on the Good Friday Agreement.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

WMD/45-Minutes

Put to him that one would expect the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to ask for precise details about a claim that a potential enemy country could 'do something' within 45 minutes, the PMOS said he thought that this whole debate appeared to be an attempt to rewrite history and inject another element of conspiracy into the issue. He pointed out that, subsequent to the publication of the Dossier, the 45-minute point had played little part in the discussion about Iraq. Peter Bradley MP had put down some figures yesterday pointing out how little it had been raised during the Debate inasmuch as there had been two questions about it in the 38,000 Written Questions and it had not been mentioned at all in the 4,500+ Oral Questions. Nor had the Prime Minister drawn attention to it in his Statement to the House on 18 March. The PMOS underlined that we had not claimed, as some were reporting, that Saddam could attack the UK within 45-minutes, or indeed within any timescale. We had said consistently that, were he to deploy WMD, we would inevitable be drawn into any regional conflict. The Prime Minister had actually stated this point on the way to Camp David in September 2002. As the Dossier had made clear, the Prime Minister and the Government believed that Saddam had WMD and that he had the capability to deploy them both in a battlefield and a strategic capacity. Some people were implying that since the 45-minute claim did not apply to strategic or long-range missiles, the Government had in some way not made the case that we believed that Saddam had that capability. This was completely untrue. Page 22 of the Dossier set out clearly:

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comment (1)

» Wednesday, February 4, 2004

45-Minutes

Put to him that the Prime Minister's admission that he had not known that the claim of "45-minutes" referred only to Battlefield munitions, when he was making his speech in the House of Commons on the vote on whether or not to go to war, was an extraordinary admission, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said no. The secret intelligence report had not specified the particular delivery system to which the time of 45 minutes applied. Therefore there was no reason why the Prime Minister should have asked that question. Asked if the Prime Minister should then have qualified it since he didn't have a clue what he was talking about, the PMOS said it was not that he didn't know what he was talking about. The Prime Minister was relying on the information from the SIS which was very different from not having a clue. Put to him that the Prime Minister had left the House with the very strong impression that the 45-minute claim referred to more than Battlefield weapons, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had not over-emphasised the 45-minute point in his speech at the time. Asked why the Prime Minister had chosen to raise it at all given its ambiguity, the PMOS repeated that the Prime Minster had not made a big point about it in the speech to the House on the 18th of March last year. In fact he had not mentioned it at all.

Briefing took place at 15:45 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

EU Accession Immigration

Asked to clarify what the Prime Minister had said when he referred to "withdrawing concessions" on immigration to the EU Accession countries, the PMOS made it clear that the Prime Minster was not talking about rescinding the right to work. We believed that the right to work was important to the UK, not least because of the skills shortages, for instance, which had been highlighted by the CBI earlier this week. What the Prime Minister, David Blunkett and Andrew Smith had been working on was action they could take to further tighten up procedures, such as the Habitual Residence Test for the 1st of May. That dealt with when people got benefits and so forth because we were not going to tolerate so-called "benefit-tourism". We would stress again however that this was a precautionary exercise, because the evidence suggested that the predicted flood of people coming here, which had been predicted whenever any enlargement has taken place in the past, wouldn't happen.

Briefing took place at 15:45 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Butler Inquiry/Dr Jones

Asked if the Government had a response to comments made by Dr Brian Jones in the Independent this morning, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said he was surprised at the newspaper's own surprise at Dr Jones' remarks. He reminded journalists that Dr Jones had made much the same remarks on 3rd September 2003, as journalists would discover if they looked at news reports at that time. If journalists looked at the Independent itself on the 4th September 2003, it covered pretty much the same ground, including the conclusion that "yesterday's criticism from the Intelligence Community re-enforced the impression that the Hutton Inquiry had turned into quicksand for Downing Street". All that Dr Jones had said today had already been considered either by Lord Hutton or the ISC. Brian Jones was an acknowledged expert within his own particular field, but as Lord Hutton had heard, his concerns had been considered by his two superiors in the DIS, both of whom had given evidence, and both of whom were on the JIC, and they had not taken up his concerns. It should also be remembered that Dr Jones had not said that the 45-minute point should not have been included in the dossier, simply that it should have been expressed in a slightly different form of words.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

» Tuesday, February 3, 2004

WMD Inquiry

Asked if the Prime Minister believed that Lord Butler had done a satisfactory job investigating Jonathan Aitken when he was Cabinet Secretary given that he was now in charge of the Inquiry into the Iraq war, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that the Prime Minister believed that Lord Butler was a distinguished former Cabinet Secretary who during his time within Government would have developed a good knowledge of how intelligence was gathered, assessed and used - all issues which were germane to this Inquiry. Asked if the Prime Minister had any specific thoughts about Lord Butler's investigation of Jonathan Aitken, the PMOS said that journalists were more than able to give a commentary of events during previous administrations if they so wished.

Briefing took place at 15:45 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

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» Friday, February 6, 2004

Libya

WMD/45 Minutes

Europe

» Thursday, February 5, 2004

WMD/45 Minutes

Northern Ireland

WMD/45-Minutes

» Wednesday, February 4, 2004

45-Minutes

EU Accession Immigration

Butler Inquiry/Dr Jones

» Tuesday, February 3, 2004

WMD Inquiry

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