Sunday Telegraph September 27, 1998
(via IMRA)

            Britain had no stomach for a fight, says arms inspector. Fergal Keane talks to the UN official Scott Ritter, who claims that Foreign Office duplicity forced him to resign.

SCOTT Ritter strode into his lawyer's office high above Manhattan and grasped my hand with one of the firmest grips I have ever encountered. Tall and powerfully built, he is a commanding presence, a man you would certainly want to have on your side in the heat of battle. But just now the former US Marine and Gulf war veteran is the object of fierce scorn from his one-time political masters.

Having headed the UN's weapons inspection team in Iraq for seven years, Mr Ritter abruptly resigned last month, saying it was no longer possible to do his job. Now, in a detailed interview to be broadcast by the BBC next week, Mr Ritter has accused the British Government of letting him down by backing away from the disarming of Iraq.

Although he denies feeling bitter, Mr Ritter's anger at what he perceives as duplicitous behaviour by the US and British governments surfaced throughout our meeting. The British and the Americans were now working to ensure that only the "illusion of arms control" existed. This was because the two countries had opted for a policy of containment in the absence of any will or public support for military action against Iraq.

"I resigned because I was being asked to do a job that was duplicitous. We were trying to do a job and were being pushed by the United States and the United Kingdom towards something that would produce the illusion of arms control rather than our stated policy of disarming Iraq," said Mr Ritter.

Mr Ritter reinforced the grim picture painted by the Iraqi defector Sami Salih in last week's exclusive Telegraph report. He described Saddam's circle as increasingly arrogant and defiant.

"They are smooth and they are cocky. These are guys with blood on their hands. They would think nothing of killing you and killing your family. They are like wolves around blood," he said.

Scott Ritter spent seven years as a weapons inspector in Iraq, having served as a major with the US Marine Corps during the Gulf war. In person he comes across as a sincere man who feels that he and the other inspectors were betrayed by their political masters. He is particularly critical of the Foreign Office which, he said, had earlier offered him strong support.

Mr Ritter claims that the head of the Middle East department at the FCO, Derek Plumbley, flew to America in July and told the Americans and the UN that Britain would not support planned inspections of presidential sites in Iraq.

"Earlier in July they had given me the complete opposite signal when I had attended meetings in London," he said. "The reality of what we were about to do is that we were going after hard intelligence, going after sites that most probably contained components of prohibited weapons and were protected by people close to the president."

Mr Ritter says the Iraqis would have stopped the inspections and thus created an incident that would demand action by the United Nations. It was to avoid this scenario that the Americans and British withdrew their support, he believes. "There were fiscal pressures and a lack of support at home for action. So they preferred to have the illusion of arms control rather than looking like a paper tiger."

Mr Ritter's critics have described him as a bull in a china shop, the original stout-hearted soldier who cannot appreciate the big political picture. He has been strongly criticised by Madeleine Albright and by the Foreign Office.

"We had a very high regard for Scott Ritter when he was leading the UN's weapons inspection teams," said a Foreign Office official closely involved with policy-making on Iraq. "But after last February's showdown with Iraq, the diplomacy of containing Iraq became much more difficult."

The Clinton administration has even ordered an FBI investigation into his conduct. The allegation, which he vehemently denies, is that he passed on information to the Israelis. The results of the investigation are to be published soon and Mr Ritter confidently expects his name to be cleared.

He says he dealt with intelligence agencies from around the world, but spying was never on his agenda. It was the Iraqi claim that Mr Ritter was a US spy that led to their withdrawal of cooperation with him and a subsequent showdown in the Gulf last January.

"The task we were given was a very difficult one. It led to confrontation with the Iraqis because they were hiding the weapons and didn't want to give them up. The biological weapons, the nuclear weapons, the ballistic missiles . . . they lied about it all back in 1991. Since the very beginning, Saddam has lied."

Created as a result of the 1991 Security Council resolution 687, the UN Special Commission (Unscom) was set up to investigate Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programme as well as its missile capability. Before trade sanctions can be lifted, the Commission must certify that weapons of mass destruction have been eliminated in Iraq.

Since its inception, Unscom has overseen the destruction of 28,000 chemical weapons, and 480,000 litres of chemicals that could be used in the making of such weapons.

Back in 1995, Ritter led the team that uncovered concealed missile guidance equipment that Iraq had purchased from a Palestinian agent. That spurred the commission into investigating Iraq's concealment of weapons, which in turn led to increased friction with the Iraqi leadership. Ritter's colleagues describe him as a good inspector. As one of them commented: "He's calm, unflappable, used to being in the field, used to commanding."

Mr Ritter said the US and British failure to support the inspections had a "devastating" effect on the morale of the commission team in Baghdad. "I would like to have Madeline Albright and Derek Plumbley fly to Baghdad without their grand titles and sit in our hotel lobby and see the effect on the morale of the inspectors . . . it had a devastating effect."

Married with two young daughters, Ritter insists that he is motivated by a desire to make the world a safer place. It is clear that he sees Saddam as a major threat to international peace and stability. To postpone action, only makes a serious conflict more inevitable, he says. "There is no doubt that if a decision were made today to back up the commission with military force, lives would be lost. But if you avoid a decision today, more lives will be lost in the future . . . don't brush it off, it is a problem which can only get bigger."

With Iraq now clearly obstructing the inspections, Mr Ritter's portrayal of a regime that has nothing but contempt for the international community rings true.