Some still neatly stacked in metal cupboards, others strewn across the floor, the secret letters and files of Iraq’s Foreign Ministry are the latest curiosity in the hunt for the truth behind Saddam Hussein’s complex relationship with the outside world.
There is no smoking gun, only a smoking building where waves of looting on the first days after the regime’s collapse have left charred papers and shards of broken window panes across every floor.
In the wake of Tuesday’s allegations that British Labour backbench MP George Galloway (see story below) took money from the Iraqi regime, half the British press corps in Baghdad was crunching up darkened stairwells, tripping over files and pamphlets.
Even in its heyday the 10-storey ministry was a slow-motion death-trap. Strips of asbestos line the walls and ceilings or have come away on to the floor. Chairs, tables, light fixtures and every item of electrical equipment have gone. The lift doors have been kicked in. But amid the wreckage of one of the most meticulous bureaucracies in the Arab world, the workings of the ministry are still easy to decipher.
A small team of Iraqi men from the United States-funded Free Iraqi Forces have set up their camp-beds beside the main foyer where a broken chandelier still hangs. They allowed reporters into the building this week, but, taking a leaf out of Saddam’s book, they insisted that every group had a minder with it. Documents could be read and notes made, but nothing was allowed out of the ministry.
This was in contrast to scenes over the past few days when a US television network took carloads of documents from the Foreign Ministry and other civil service buildings. Several key treaties from Iraq’s diplomatic archives have been removed by the US television reporters.
A tour of the building showed that the first floor took the brunt of the fire. An archive stretching half the width of the building has become nothing but neat slabs of ash in metal shelves. The shape of files can just be made out
Next to the main archive in a small room where David Blair, The Daily Telegraph reporter, unearthed the correspondence about Galloway,
orange box files are untouched by fire though ash has drifted in.
Piles of folders deal with the United Nations weapons inspections, though much of it seems to be copies of statements issued by Richard Butler, head of the team known as Unscom which was withdrawn in December 1998.
In the short time we were allowed to look through the material no documents relating to Hans Blix and his more recent efforts to find weapons were found.
The eighth floor handled visa applications. Scores of black box files, itemised by country, contained notes from people explaining why they wanted to visit Saddam’s Iraq.
The seventh floor must have been the ministry’s database. Hundreds of index cards with basic details about every country in the world, from a service called Deadline Data on World Affairs, were scattered about.
Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, once one of Iraq’s few European allies, was clearly a place of major interest.
A booklet called the Media War on Yugoslavia lay on the floor. Near it was an album of photocopied press clippings about the Balkan wars with Arabic translations attached.
The book contained a Guardian profile of Milosevic published in June 1992. The article’s opening sentence clearly caught the interest of the ministry’s media division: ”To the demonstrators sporadically taking to the streets of Belgrade he is Europe’s own Saddam Hussein.”
The door to a suite of rooms on the seventh floor had the name plate
”office of the senior political adviser”. Among many box files from various countries, one was labelled United Kingdom. Covering the second half of the 1990s it contained texts of speeches by the prime minister, official statements from the foreign and commonwealth offices.
Contributions by Galloway, a leading parliamentary opponent of sanctions, figured prominently. A curt letter written on December 1 1998 to Galloway by Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary, was stapled to a covering note from Iraq’s top diplomat in London to the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad.
Cook’s letter rejected allegations by Galloway that four Unscom inspectors were working for Israel’s spy agency, Mossad.
There was nothing in the Iraqi diplomat’s covering note to Baghdad to suggest that Galloway had raised these allegations or made any other critical points about Unscom and sanctions at the request of the Iraqis, let alone in return for financial gain.
It was not explained how the Iraqi diplomat had obtained a copy of Cook’s letter.
Also in the file was a faxed letter to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Sir Richard Branson’s behalf. It requested permission for his hot air balloon to use Iraqi airspace but finally it went round. — Â