Questions over timing of Iraq report

Saddam's Iraq: "As bad now as it ever was"

By Paul Reynolds BBC News Online world affairs correspondent

At a briefing in London on its Iraqi human rights report, Foreign Office officials found themselves in an awkward position.

They were not praised for bringing these outrages to world attention, but were criticised for ignoring them in the past and using them for propaganda now.

To be late is not necessarily to be wrong

Even an Iraqi exile they had brought to the event criticised the British and other governments for being so late.

This was not an 'I-told-you-so' briefing but a game of catch-up.

The officials could not even say if the UK Government was seeking the indictment of Saddam Hussein and his aides on war crimes charges - which this document could be used to justify, and which has been called for by the London-based organisation Indict.

They just said this was being "discussed" internationally and that "Saddam Hussein should be held to account".

Halabja 1988: 5,000 Kurds gassed by Iraqi forces

Many of the questions reflected the views of Amnesty International - that nobody really doubts the nature of Saddam Hussein's rule, but that it is opportunistic to present them so suddenly in advance of a possible war.

The British officials confined themselves to saying that they felt it "right" to produce the dossier at this time and to point out that removing weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein would benefit the Iraqi people.

They made a particular play of the latter point, stressing that Saddam Hussein was ready to use what one Iraqi documents refers to as "technical" means to kill demonstrators.

And, of course, to be late is not necessarily to be wrong.

Whatever the questions about its motives, the report will without doubt help the government as it makes a case for action.

Just as there was preparation of the battlefield in the Gulf War, so this time there is preparation of public opinion.

Sham amnesty

The document is quite short - 23 pages on expensive paper.

Some of the evidence goes back 10 years or more but some is recent, including the alleged execution of 23 political prisoners, mainly Shia Muslims, in October 2001.

A four-minute video has also been produced by the Foreign Office.

The British officials ... distanced themselves from past policies

It consists of brutal pictures of torture and violence but these are largely unexplained and accompanied by grim music, which caused several television journalists to scoff at its lack of precision.

Alongside the British officials, who cannot be named, was an Iraqi exile who can: Hussein Al-Shahristani.

He is a former nuclear scientist who reported that he spent 11 years in solitary confinement for refusing to work on a nuclear bomb.

He was in no doubt that the regime is as bad now as it has ever been.

And he dismissed the recent release of prisoners as cynical.

Of the prisoners freed, he said, 90% were ordinary criminals. Of the 10,000 arrested with him, only 1% had ever been heard of again.

The British officials took refuge in a highly unusual move for the Foreign Office.

They distanced themselves from past policies, especially those of the 1980s which had supported Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran.

Then and now

Normally, previous policies are rarely criticised, even that of appeasement in the 1930s. It is institutional self-protection. No longer.

"We will not justify the policies of past governments", said one official. He was responding to an angry journalist who said he had once asked the UK Government why it was selling shells to Iraq, only to be accused, in a minister's letter to his editor, of putting British jobs at risk.

The journalist, Adel Darwish, said afterwards that the then Conservative government had tried to "rubbish" him.

It is different now.

Then, Saddam Hussein was fighting against Iran. Now, the United States and the United Kingdom may go to war against him for the second time.

Dr Al-Shahristani departed from the British script again when he let it be known that he does not favour an invasion of Iraq.

Instead, he wants protection from the air for an Iraqi uprising which, he believes, would quickly capture the main cities and encircle Baghdad.

Propaganda is often a bit like that - not everyone sings the same song.