'Take Saddam alive', says new Iraq envoy
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein should be brought to trial for his crimes, not killed like his sons Uday and Qusay, the man appointed as Britain’s new envoy to Iraq said today.
The call from Sir Jeremy Greenstock – who quits his role as UN ambassador to take up the Baghdad posting in September – was backed by a prominent member of the new Iraqi Governing Council, Ahmed Chalabi.
Meanwhile, Sir Jeremy cast doubt over whether weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, suggesting Saddam may have destroyed them before UN-backed inspections began last year.
Sir Jeremy said that the deaths of Uday and Qusay – killed on July 22 in a firefight at a villa where they were hiding in Mosul – was a “genuine success” for the US-led coalition in Iraq.
He told the BBC1 programme Breakfast with Frost: “We have now got to get the father.
“I would like to see him brought before a court, but that is in the hands of the military team looking for him. I would say it is quite important to do that.”
Mr Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, told the programme: “I think it is much better for the Iraqi people and for the world for Saddam to be caught alive and put on trial for the crimes he has committed against the people of Iraq, against neighbours of Iraq and against the world.
“He has to account for the mass graves of hundreds of thousands of people and for the wars he waged against Iran, Kuwait and the people of Kurdistan.”
Asked if he was confident weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq, Sir Jeremy said: “I don’t know. I don’t know what the story is.
“I personally believe that Saddam was certainly running programmes, but he decided to destroy and conceal many of his weapons when he knew the inspectors were coming, in order not to be caught on the wrong side of the political line.
“The story is now unfolding on the ground. There are a lot of people working on it discreetly.”
Sir Jeremy was a key player in Britain’s efforts to secure a UN Security Council resolution authorising war on the grounds that Saddam had failed to disarm his WMD.
He said: “I believed the intelligence at the time. I still believe the intelligence.
“There was a threat. There were weapons. There were programmes. Let’s wait for the story to come out.”
Sir Jeremy acknowledged that the WMD issue was of greater significance to the UK than to the US, because Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair based his justification for war entirely on the need to disarm Saddam, while Washington had a “wider remit”.
