'Saddam responds only to pressure' says Straw

'Saddam responds only to pressure' says Straw

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has called for a further increase in pressure on Saddam Hussein. Mr Straw told MPs in Parliament that continuing inspections with no firm end date would not achieve the disarmament required by the Security Council.

He said that the British Government had circulated a revised version of the UK/US/Spain draft second Resolution. 'We are examining whether a list of defined tests for Iraqi compliance would be useful in helping the Council to come to a judgement', he said.

Mr Straw added:

"What we are proposing is eminently reasonable. We are not expecting Saddam to have disarmed in a week or so; but to demonstrate by that time the full, unconditional, immediate and active cooperation demanded of him by successive UN resolutions since 1991."

Mr Straw referred to a new UNMOVIC document which 'sets out, in 173 pages of painstaking detail, the terrible nature of the weapons Saddam has sought with such determination to develop'. He called the paper a 'chilling catalogue of evasion and deceit, of feigning cooperation while in reality pursuing concealment'.

Mr Straw went on to discuss the situation across the Middle East. He said:

"A lasting settlement in the Middle East would remove one great threat to security in the region and the wider world. In confronting the danger from Iraq's weapons, the UN can remove another."

ENDS

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