the UK believed that the Iraqi threat had been contained

Ross was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the UK Mission to the United Nations 1997-2002, responsible for liaison with the UN weapons inspectors

17. It remains my view that the internal government assessment of Iraq’s capabilities was intentionally and substantially exaggerated in public government documents during 2002 and 2003. Throughout my posting in New York, it was the UK and US assessment that while there were many unanswered questions about Iraq’s WMD stocks and capabilities, we did not believe that these amounted to a substantial threat. At no point did we have any firm evidence, from intelligence sources or otherwise, of significant weapons holdings: most of the unanswered questions derived from discrepancies in Iraq’s accounting for its past stocks and the destruction of these stocks.

18. The UK believed that the Iraqi threat had been effectively contained. Indeed, at many of the UK/US FCO/State Department bilateral discussions of Iraq policy which I attended between 1998-2002, discussion would often begin with an
overall assessment of whether containment was working or not. Invariably, the conclusion, shared by both the US and UK, was positive. The last of these discussions that I attended took place in June 2002.

19. Before I took the New York post in late 1997, I was briefed by relevant departments in the FCO. At Non-Proliferation Department (NPD), which was responsible for the Iraq disarmament issue, I was told that the UK did not believe that Iraq possessed any substantial stocks of CW, BW or nuclear weapons or the means to deliver them. None of the intelligence I saw subsequently in the 4 ½ years that I covered the issue, where I read on most days a thick folder of “humint” and “sigint” relating to Iraq, or the Joint Intelligence Committee assessments, during this period, substantially changed this assessment.