Iraq (Hansard, 9 February 2004)

§ Llew Smith
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign arid Commonwealth Affairs if he will list the areas where the Government has identified an inaccurate or false declaration by the former Iraqi Government in the declaration on its proscribed weapons of mass destruction programmes submitted to the United Nations Security Council on 7 December 2002, specifying the page number in each case. [152311]

§ Mr. MacShane
A careful examination of Iraq's declaration was undertaken in December 2002 and January 2003 and its contents were compared with the outstanding disarmament issues reported by UNSCOM upon their withdrawal from Iraq and against intelligence assessments available at the time. The results of this examination showed that there was no new information contained in the declaration, and that it therefore failed to address any of the outstanding issues. This failure was borne out by subsequent discoveries by UNMOVIC inspection teams in early 2003, and later by the Iraq Survey Group.
1304W
The Iraqi Declaration itself remains a document confidential to the United Nations Security Council. It would not, therefore, be appropriate to go into the detail of the specific contents of any part of the declaration. Huge quantities of documents remain to be translated.

§ Llew Smith
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the(a) content and (b) implications of the resignation speech of Dr. David Kay as the leader of the Iraq Survey Group. [152317]

§ Mr. MacShane
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has announced that an inquiry will be instigated to look into the question of the intelligence received concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and how it was interpreted. Dr. Kay's statement will clearly be of interest to the inquiry.

§ Sir Menzies Campbell
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what the legal personality is of the Coalition Provisional Authority; and if he will make a statement. [152339]

§ Mr. Straw
As noted in Security Council Resolution 1483 of 22 May 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established to exercise the specific authorities, responsibilities and obligations under international law of the occupying powers. The authority of the CPA is set out in CPA Regulation No. 1, copies of which will be placed in the Library of the House.

§ Sir Menzies Campbell
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in what capacity and on whose behalf UK secondees to the Coalition Provisional Authority are acting; who pays their(a) salaries and (b) expenses; to whom they are answerable for their activities; and if he will make a statement. [152340]

§ Mr. Straw
Staff seconded by HMG to the Coalition Provisional Authority are working in several areas of governance, assisting in reconstruction and building Iraqi government capacity. They are acting on behalf of the Coalition Provisional Authority. They remain answerable to HMG for what they do. HMG pays their salaries, travel costs and other incidental expenses. The US government funds the provision of food and other basic services to all Coalition Provisional Authority staff.

§ Llew Smith
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many technically trained Arabic speakers are members of the Iraq Survey Group; how many of the Arabic speakers are from the United Kingdom; and what estimate he has made of how long it will take to translate each of the documents obtained by the ISG on Iraq's military programmes that are deemed relevant to weapons of mass destruction. [153058]

§ Mr. MacShane
There are currently 320 technically-trained Arabic speakers with the Iraq Survey Group, of whom three are from the United Kingdom.
The Iraq Survey Group is still collecting documents. The time that it will take to translate such documents will vary according to the condition of any such documents and whether they are hand-written or typed. The best estimate available is that translation will take 1305W on average one hour per page of text. It is not possible, however, to give any firm indication of how long any translation work might take or of what the eventual total volume of documents requiring translation might be.

§ Mrs. Spelman
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what measures are in place to ensure that women will be fairly represented in the first Iraqi parliament. [153255]

§ Mr. Rammell
The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) is overseeing the drafting of a Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) to be completed by the end of February 2004. We are encouraging the IGC to ensure that the TAL includes provisions for the fair representation of women in the Transitional National Assembly.

§ Mrs. Spelman
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether gender criteria will be applied to the selection of candidates for the forthcoming Iraqi parliament. [153256]

§ Mr. Rammell
This is a matter for the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), which is overseeing the drafting of a Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) to include criteria for the selection of candidates to the Transitional National Assembly (TNA). We are encouraging the IGC to use the TAL to promote the fair representation of women in the TNA.

§ Sir John Stanley
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on what date he first became aware to which Iraqi weapons the 45-minutes claim in the Iraq weapons of mass destruction dossier applied. [154182]

§ Mr. Straw
I first became aware of 'the 45-minute claim' when I read early drafts of the Government's dossier and the Joint Intelligence Committee's assessment dated 9 September 2002. The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in their report of 9 September 2003 (CM 5972) published, at paragraph 50, the relevant passage from the assessment. This stated: "Intelligence also indicates that chemical and biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20–45 minutes." The ISC also commented (para 57): "The JIC did not know precisely which munitions could be deployed from where to where and the context of the intelligence was not included in the JIC Assessment". I became aware that the intelligence behind this assessment referred to battlefield weapons in June 2003.