Tony Baldry (Banbury): What does the Prime Minister say to the statement by Hans Blix the day before yesterday that after eight years of inspections and four years of no inspections, to call it a day after 11 weeks of inspections seems a bit short?

The Prime Minister: I would say to him what I have said to him and others throughout�the time is relevant only if the will is there to co-operate. If it is not, nobody seriously suggests�and in my conversations with Dr. Blix, he has not suggested�that if Saddam is not co-operating, the inspectors can go in and search out the weapons. The best proof of that is what happened in the 1990s when there was a complete denial of the existence of an offensive biological weapons programme. For four years the inspectors were in there searching for it and they did not find it, because it is very difficult to find it if there is no co-operation from the authorities. Then Saddam's son-in-law defected to Jordan and said that there was an offensive biological weapons programme. The Iraqis then admitted as much, and at that point the programme was at least partially shut down. The son-in-law was then lured back to Iraq and murdered.

I think that all the evidence of the past 12 years shows that disarmament cannot be accomplished without the full co-operation of the Iraqis. That is why I say that time is not the issue. The issue is that Saddam must decide to change the nature of his regime from one that relies on weapons of mass destruction to one that does not. All the evidence that we have, and all the intelligence evidence, shows that he has no intention of doing so.