§ Lynne JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to the answer of 10 February 2004,Official Report , column 1303W, on Iraq, what methodology was used to assess that there was no new information contained in the quantities of documents that remained to be translated; and whether all the documents that formed the declaration have now been translated. [187392]
§ Mr. MacShaneIn the interests of speed, the process of analysing the Iraqi declaration concentrated on identifying key words and passages to which priority translation was given. It quickly became clear that Iraq had not provided information on the outstanding disarmament issues that had been identified by the UN Special Commission in their final report.
Translation of the declaration was complete by mid-March 2003.
§ Lynne JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether UNMOVIC and the IAEA decided that parts of the Iraqi declaration of its weapons of mass destruction needed to be excised before it distributed the report to all members of the UN Security Council; and whether all members of the Security Council have now received(a) an unedited and (b) an edited version of the declaration. [187393]
§ Mr. MacShaneCertain passages of the Iraqi declaration relating to Iraq's nuclear programme were excised by UNMOVIC and the IAEA before distribution to non-nuclear weapon states. All members of the Security Council at the time received copies of this edited version. The full version was made available only to the Permanent Members of the Security Council.
§ Lynne JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when the UK Government became aware that Iraq had 500 tonnes of yellowcake stored at a facility near Tuwaitha, south of Baghdad. [187396]
§ Mr. MacShaneUnder UN Security Council resolution 687, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was mandated to investigate and dismantle Iraq's nuclear weapons programmes and to monitor all nuclear-related activity in Iraq. As part of this process, in the early part of the 1990s, the IAEA consolidated Iraq's stockpiles of nuclear materials and other radioactive sources on a single site near Tuwaitha for ease of on-going monitoring. The yellowcake in question was included in this exercise. It was also declared by Iraq as part of their Full, Final and Complete Declaration of nuclear activities and materials submitted to the UN in 1996. All of the materials consolidated at the site were subject to continuous IAEA inspection and verification.
1453W
§ Lynne JonesTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to his answer of 22 July,Official Report , column 544W, on Iraq, whether the Leader of the Opposition had access to the same primary intelligence as the Prime Minister relating to (a) the September 2002 dossier, (b) the February 2003 dossier and (c) the threat posed to the UK by Iraq from May 1997 to the commencement of military action against Iraq in March 2003. [187715]
§ Mr. DalyellTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs pursuant to the oral answer from the Minister for the armed forces of 7 September 2003, Official Report, column 612, on Iraq, what discussions he has had with the Government of Iraq about the banning of al-Jazeera. [188481]
§ Mr. AlexanderThe decision to close the al-Jazeera office in Baghdad was made by the Iraqi Interim Government.
We have repeatedly made clear to the Iraqi Government the importance we attach to media freedom in Iraq and the need to strengthen the institutions established by the Coalition Provisional Authority to ensure this. We will continue to do so.