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http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/html/news.html This dossier is not enough Evening Standard editorial comment The Iraq dossier, which MPs will read today before their debate tonight on military action against Saddam Hussein, adds little concrete information to that published earlier this month by the International Institute of Strategic Studies. It does confirm that Saddam possesses stores of chemical and biological weapons, and could produce a nuclear weapon within two years if he is sent nuclear material from abroad. It further confirms that Iraq has delivery mechanisms with a range of 400 miles, capable of reaching Israel or British bases in Cyprus. Saddam's concealment of his weapons programmes is becoming more sophisticated. There are signs that he is attempting to increase the range of his rockets and self-propelled gliders (though missiles capable of striking Britain or the US are probably a decade away, and harder to conceal from US surveillance). The rest consists of a reworking of information already made public. Saddam is undoubtedly a monstrous dictator. The questions MPs on both sides of the House will have to ask themselves, however, are, first, whether Saddam's possession of these weapons is in itself enough to persuade the West to invade Iraq in order to remove them, and, second, whether Saddam is likely to allow his arsenal to be used by terrorists to strike against the West. He is, after all, a man whose primal instinct and ambition is to maintain his absolute power base in Iraq. People who would answer "Yes" will be satisfied that Saddam, in Tony Blair's language, "needs to be stopped". People who would answer No, in the belief that the tested policy of deterrence should be able to prevent war with Iraq, will surely conclude that Mr Blair's dossier today does nothing to strengthen the case for military action against Saddam. We continue to take the latter view. Britain should not take military action against Iraq without being part of a concerted international coalition which could only emerge after a Security Council resolution setting a deadline for compliance by Saddam with unfettered weapons inspection. Today's dossier contains nothing to alter that. 45 minutes from chemical attack by Charles Reiss, Political Editor, Evening Standard Saddam Hussein's armoury of chemical weapons is on standby for use within 45 minutes, Tony Blair's dossier revealed today. The Iraqi leader has 20 missiles which could reach British military bases in Cyprus, as well as Israel and Nato members Greece and Turkey. He has also been seeking to buy uranium from Africa for use in nuclear weapons. Those are the key charges in a 14-point "dossier of death" finally published by the Government today. In an introduction, Mr Blair says that the evidence leaves Britain and the international community no choice but to act. The central charges against Saddam are set out at the start of the document. They include: * Plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, some deployable within 45 minutes. * Evidence he has retained up to 20 al-Hussein missiles from the Gulf War. These could be used with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads and with a range of 650 kilometres, could reach "the UK sovereign base areas in Cyprus and Nato members Greece and Turkey as well as all Iraq's neighbours". * Evidence he has "sought significant amounts of uranium from Africa". * Work to extend the range of the al-Samud liquid propellant missile to at least 200 kilometres. These and the other charges are amplified in the 55-page dossier. The Prime Minister's foreword says: "I believe that, faced with the information available to me, the United Kingdom government has been right to support the demand that this issue is confronted and dealt with. "We must ensure that he [Saddam] does not get to use the weapons he has, or get hold of the weapons he wants." Critics, however, said that the dossier - entitled Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Assessment of the British Government - failed to produce a new "killer fact" to justify all-out war to topple Saddam. Some defence experts also acknowledged that much of the information was already known. Mr Blair, however, says that the document, based on the work of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the heart of the British intelligence machine, demonstrates that the Iraqi regime is "a current and serious threat to the UK national interest". The dossier goes further - to document Iraq's human rights abuses, with horrific individual accounts of tortures and mass executions. It also uses extraordinary means to show the almost farcical lengths to which Saddam has gone to hide the evidence of his weapons programme. The report includes a map of one of the dictator's "presidential palaces", from which UN weapons inspectors have always been barred on the grounds that they are Saddam's private homes. The map shows an area of just one of the "palaces" with the total area of Buckingham Palace and its grounds superimposed as a white blob. It shows that the Queen's London home and its grounds would fit comfortably into a tiny corner of one of Saddam's properties. Saddam: 'seeking to buy uranium from Africa' The dossier says that Iraq has developed mobile military laboratories to assist the use of nerve gas or chemical agents to maximum effect and with maximum speed. It continues: "Intelligence indicates that the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to do so." It suggests that, without the necessary-weapons grade uranium, Iraq is five years away from producing its own nuclear bomb. It acknowledges that if the material could be obtained, that time span would narrow sharply to as little as 12 months. It says that since the weapons inspectors left in 1998 "there has been an accumulation of intelligence indicating that Iraq is making concerted covert efforts to acquire dual use technology and materials with nuclear applications ... there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Earlier, as MPs assembled for today's one-day emergency debate, Labour dissidents warned it would take more than a recital of Saddam's past misdeeds to convince them. MP and former minister Glenda Jackson said the document must provide "contemporary, verifiable evidence that Saddam Hussein is a clear, present danger". Otherwise, she made clear, she and scores of others would rise in mass revolt against any move to military action to topple the regime. Tonight's vote, at 10pm, will be on a technical move to adjourn the debate but even so up to 60 Labour MPs are threatening to rebel. The latest opinion-poll carried a warning for Mr Blair of a similar mood among the voters. The ICM poll in The Guardian showed 46 per cent against toppling the Iraq regime by force, up six points on a week ago, with 37 per cent in favour, up one point. The survey suggests, though, that public opinion is still "soft" on the issue with the argument open to be won. Trouble in the Cabinet appeared to have been defused for the time being, however, after a session of almost two hours last night. All concerned were said to have accepted the policy of "containing" Saddam had failed and he had to be stopped. One of the Cabinet's two leading doves, International Development Secretary Clare Short, emerged to say: "We had a good discussion. We all agreed." Ms Short had held a 20-minute private meeting with Mr Blair beforehand. The other most prominent soft-liner, Leader of the Commons Robin Cook, also let it be known that he had no intention of resigning. Iraq said today that the government dossier was "baseless". "Mr Blair is acting as part of the Zionist campaign against Iraq and all his claims are baseless," Iraqi culture minister Hamed Yousif Hummadi said. It's the politics, stupid Tomorrow, discourtsey of the RMT leader Bob Crow, thousands of Londoners will be walking long distances to work. As they wait at bus stops while buses go past, filled to capacity, they may be cogitating on why Mr Crow, abetted by Aslef's union leader Mick Rix, is putting them through this ordeal, with the threat of more to come. We know that Mr Crow is demanding a larger wage hike than the three per cent on the table - itself higher than inflation and the most London Underground can afford to pay - and that Mick Rix has ordered Aslef drivers to come out in support of similar demands on pay and working conditions, so that the strike can effectually close the system down. Yet RMT and Aslef Tube drivers get six weeks holiday and £31,300 a year, and last year were awarded staggering rises amounting to 9.7 per cent - so what is going on? Many Tube workers will be asking the same question. There are 18,800 of them; only 10,000 belong to Aslef or the RMT, and of those only 3000 voted for strike action, leaving 15,800 Tube workers to rue the effect on their weekly pay-packet of a 24-hour strike. The answer has nothing to do with money and everything to do with politics. Bob Crow and Mick Rix are competing against each other on two fronts. RMT wants to steal train drivers from Aslef (and vice versa) and the two men are competing for the leadership of the radical left in the union movement. The last thing likely to be on their minds is the struggle of Tube passengers into work, or for that matter the welfare of track and maintenance workers. This is where the mayor of any other city, elected to protect the interests of its citizens, would knock heads together. Unfortunately, London's mayor is Ken Livingstone - another militant socialist until it no longer served his ambitions. His interest in the Tube seems to be restricted to it as a vehicle for his re-election. No marks Ministers should not have panic attacks. It makes voters think there is no-one in charge of the rattling train; worse, that the driver has jumped off before it hits the buffers. During Sunday's TV interview with David Frost, the Education Secretary, Estelle Morris, suggested that the system of AS and A2 levels which she introduced two years ago may have been so misguided that it might be better to scrap the "gold standard" A level system altogether and replace it with the International Baccalaureate (IB). To make this breathtaking admission, baldly and in such an ad hoc fashion, illustrates the dangers of inexperience combined with lack of nerve. Ms Morris had her back to the wall on Sunday, but that is no excuse for pitching secondary education into renewed turmoil. The advantages and disadvantages of IBs in comparison with A levels deserve lengthy research before such a suggestion should even be floated. Not only are the lives and futures of millions of primary schoolchildren affected by the Education Secretary's casual comments: the lives and futures of thousands of teachers are affected too. At the moment there are 45 A level subjects, compared to 12 subjects currently studied by pupils taking IBs. Did Ms Morris stop to think how her remarks might be received by a teaching profession which would be turned upside down by such a change, and will meanwhile become more demoralised than ever? Helping the police David Blunkett's much vaunted Community Safety Officers began patrolling London streets yesterday and predictably their introduction has sparked controversy. Although there is an element of special pleading in the Police Federation's objection to what is effectively an auxiliary police force - it is first and foremost a trade union which wants to protect its members' jobs - that does not mean all its criticisms are invalid. The Federation makes the sensible points that the CSOs' limited powers of detaining people for 30 minutes until "real" police arrive is a recipe for confusion, and that they could themselves become targets of thugs. Certainly, the police need a formalised system of assistance from "civilians" - special constables, for example, perform a valuable function. But there are good grounds for scepticism that the Home Secretary's auxiliaries will contribute significantly towards making London a safer place to live. --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.bacIlu Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
