Deep Blade Journal

Accounting for Iraq’s weapons materials
Today Deep Blade Journal offers a guest posting from the UK. Correspondent Geoffrey Holland has been for many months campaigning for Parliament in the UK to report the international law breach by the United States during the 1980s and early 1990s that led to arming of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein with unconventional weapons. Please see the original February 13, 2004 posting on this matter.

Deep Blade Journal thanks Geoffrey Holland for his efforts and the contribution that follows.

Both Houses of Parliament–One Question
by Geoffrey Holland
There is now a call in both British Houses of Parliament to report the United States to the United Nations Security Council for breaching the Geneva Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention by supplying Saddam Hussein with the very biological materials which were the basis for war in Iraq.

On March 17 last year, The Right Honorable Robin Cook, MP, former Leader of the House of Commons, revealed in his principled resignation speech that “US Companies sold Saddam anthrax agents”. The following day, a vote in the Commons committed Britain to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the US in the invasion of Iraq–an invasion largely predicated upon Iraq’s possession of such biological materials.

For the past year, whilst the attention of most of the world has been focused upon finding those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, British MPs have been examining the evidence upon which Robin Cook made his claim. Finding that the evidence exists, of all places, in the US Congressional Record, placed there by Senator Robert C. Byrd on September 20, 2002, there can be little doubt as to its veracity.

Consequently, Early Day Motion 300 has been tabled in the House of Commons, which calls upon the British Government to formally report the US breach of the Geneva Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention to the Security Council of the United Nations. This Commons Motion, entitled ‘Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and Iraq’ has now been signed by 105 MPs from six political Parties.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention is a vitally important international law, which forbids the transfer to any recipient of biological agents “that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes”. As Sir Teddy Taylor MP stated to the House of Commons the day following Robin Cook’s original statement, “It is difficult to prove that one wants to use a material such as anthrax to help in the improvement of animals, or to achieve better forms of production”.

Today, Monday 15 March 2004 at 2.30pm, The Lord Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries brings the issue into the House of Lords, where the following question is the first item of business on the agenda:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in accordance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, they will report to the Security Council of the United Nations the reported sale of biological weapons to Iraq by the United States”.

As Sir Teddy Taylor stated to the House of Commons one year ago: “It is abundantly clear that the US Department of Commerce approved every single thing that went from the United States to Iraq. It was not a question of secret firms doing nasty things; this was approved by Government”.

So, now there is a call in both Houses Parliament for the British Government to act responsibly and make this unpalatable truth public.

This is not a case of United-States-bashing. Far from it. The American people have simply been duped, as has much of the rest of the world. It is now our collective duty to ensure that the wise words to the US Senate of the eighty-five-year-old Father of the Senate, Robert C. Byrd, on September 20 2002 are at last heeded: “We do not need obfuscation and denial. The American People need the truth”.

May the combined efforts of both Houses of the British Parliament finally bring the truth about weapons of mass destruction not just to the American people, but to the entire world. And may we thus ensure that those at every level responsible for any breach of international law relating to the use of such weapons will be held personally accountable.

To see what transpires in the House of Lords on Monday 15 March when the Bishop of Oxford challenges the British Government, please go the following day to:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/pdvn/home.htm

To read the text of EDM 300 in the House of Commons, and to view the current list of signatories, please see: http://edm.ais.co.uk/weblink/html/motion.html/ref=300