Vilnius Letter - Background

Background

  • 14 January 2003: Jack Straw, the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, announces that London would not wait for a UN decision to attack Iraq and would act on its own. Meanwhile two other countries, Poland and Republic of Macedonia offer to provide troops.
  • 27 January 2003: Hans Blix presents the UN Security Council with the report that the inspectors had been granted access to every site they needed to inspect, but he says that “It is not enough to open doors.”
  • 28 January 2003: United States President George W. Bush delivers his State of the Union address to the United States' Congress, alleging that Saddam Hussein had ties with terrorist organizations, and that Iraq was a serious threat against the security of U.S. citizens as the world’s most dangerous producer of weapons of mass-destruction.
  • the letter of the eight of January 30, 2003, that according to many observers torpedoed the European Union's cautious position in the developing crisis, followed Colin Powell's assertion in the UN Security Council of Iraq's continuing development of illicit weapons.

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