Powell's speech at a glance
Minute-by-minute coverage of Colin Powell's
presentation to the security council
guardian.co.uk
Simon Jeffery
Wednesday February 5, 2003
3.35pm: Mr Powell begins his
presentation. He tells the security
council that the resolution returning the
inspectors placed the onus on Iraq to
disarm, not for the inspectors to disarm
it. He quotes Hans Blix's assessment
that Iraq had not acknowledged the
need to disarm.
3.40pm: He says the evidence he will
show the security council will
demonstrate Iraq is not disarming but in
fact rebuilding its weapons of mass
destruction. He plays a tape he says
was intercepted by intelligence officials
between two Iraqi officers
acknowledging Mohamed el-Baradei
was visiting the following day and
discusssing what to do with a "modified
vehicle".
3.45pm: He plays a second tape, recorded last month, that he
says contains orders to hide weapons from the inspectors. Mr
Powell describes it as part of a 12-year-old Iraqi policy to not
cooperate with inspectors. He gives the security council details
of an Iraqi special committee - answering to Saddam Hussein -
to monitor the inspectors.
3.47pm: Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons of mass
destruction is described as "false" by the US secretary of state.
He says his evidence is backed up by "solid" sources, and says
Iraqi officials are hiding banned materials in their homes and
cars to prevent them falling into the inspectors' hands.
3.50pm: He says the US has satellite photographs showing
weapons materials being moved. He shows a wepons storage
facility at Taji he says has active chemical weapons bunkers.
The bunkers were cleared before the inspectors arrived. Mr
Powell says Iraq is tapping the inspectors' communications to
find out where they are going.
3.55pm: A satellite image of a frequently monitored ballistic
weapons facility is shown with trucks moving materials a few
days before inspectors arrive. Mr Powell says the same pattern
has been repeated at 30 sites since the inspectors returned.
3.57pm: Saddam Hussein warned scientists that disclosing
information would be punishable by death and that if they left the
country for interviews they would be treated as spies. Officials
were also given guidance in how to mislead inspectors.
4.01pm: He says Iraq has placed itself in danger of "serious
consequences" by failing the tests in resolution 1441 and the
security council risks irrelevence if it allows its orders to be
ignored. "How much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's
noncompliance before we as a council, we as the United
Nations say: 'Enough. Enough'," he asks.
4.05pm: Moving onto biological weapons he says Iraq has not
accounted for all the 85,000 litres of anthrax it declared to the
first inspection regime and details mobile biological weapons
factories moved around on wheels and rails revealed to the US
by a defector. There are both research and production facilities,
he says, which operated from Thursday to Friday evenings
because Iraqi officials knew inspectors would not visit on the
Muslim holy day.
4.10pm: He says Iraq has seven to 18 such laboratories, which
he illustrates with an image of a lorry packed with scientific
equipment. The factories can produce anthrax and botulinium.
He shows footage of a Iraqi Mirage fighter jet equipped with
sprayer tanks dispensing 2,000 litres of simulated anthrax.
4.13pm: Mr Powell says there is furthermore evidence that Iraq
has destroyed the chemical weapons it admitted to having. He
says the US knows Iraq has put elements of its chemical
weapons programmes into its permitted infrastructure to hide
them. Iraq designed its programmes to be inspected, he says.
4.16pm: He shows a slide of chemical weapons leaving the
al-Mussayyib facilities corraborated by a defector who saw the
weapons go. A later slide shows bulldozers taking the topsoil
around the plant to remove chemical traces.
4.19pm: Another intercept has an Iraqi army colonel telling a
captain to "remove the expression 'nerve agents' wherever it
comes up in the wireless instructions".
4.21pm: Iraq has 100-150 tonnes of chemical agents and the
intent to use them, Mr Powell says. He quotes a source who
told intelligence officers that 1,600 death row prisoners were
used in chemical weapons experiments. "Saddam's inhumanity
has no limits," he tells the security council.
4.25pm: President Saddam attempted to obtain high tolerance
aluminium tubes that can be adapted for enriching uranium after
inspectors returned at the end of last year. Mr Powell says Iraq
at present has two of the three components needed to make a
nuclear bomb. It has also attempted to aquire magnets for
nuclear weapons manufacture.
4.30pm: Delivery systems above the permitted 150km
maximum limit for ballistic missiles include a dozen prohibited
al-Husayn and al-Abbas missiles with ranges of 600km and
900km. Saddam has attempted to acquire missile engines since
the inspectors returned and wants missiles with a range
exceeding 1000km, Mr Powell says.
4.33pm: Iraq is also developing small unmanned aeroplanes
with a range of 500km to deliver weapons, he tells the council.
4.37pm: Mr Powells says Baghdad has an agent in an al-Qaida
linked terrorist group in northern Iraq that gave sanctuary to the
group's members when they were driven from Afghanistan by the
US military campaign. He says terrorists have been based in
Baghdad for the last eight months coordinating operations in the
Middle East and beyond. He names an "al-Qaida linked
terrorist", Al-Zarqawi, who has colleagues in Chechnya who
harbour ambitions to kill Russians with toxins and also in the
UK poison cell that has manufactured ricin, he says.
4.44pm: He says he is "not comforted" by the idea that a
secular Iraqi regime would not work with religiously motivated
groups such as al-Qaida. Mr Powell says "hatred and ambition"
unite Iraq and al-Qaida. Tells council that the "nexus of Iraq and
terror" is decades old but the role of toxins is new.
4.47pm: Mr Powell discloses the testimony of a senior al-Qaida
official who revealed that he received training in Iraq.
4.49pm: Details ethnic cleansing against Kurds and Marsh
Arabs in "Saddam's police state" and says the Iraqi leader has
"utter contempt" for human life. "Given his determination to
exact revenge on those who oppose him should we take the
risk," he asks. "Leaving Saddam Hussein alone for a few more
months with weapons of mass destruction is not an option," he
says.
4.51pm: "We wrote 1441 to give Iraq one last chance, Iraq is so
far not taking that one last chance. We must not shrink from the
task that is ahead of us," he concludes. |
