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520 GCHQ GOES GLOBAL
that in the week before what was expected to be a second resolution,
the diplomat:> from the 'Group of Six' were in fact
working on their own secret plans for a compromise solution
which they hoped would avert war. 'Only the people in the
room knew what the document said,' recalls Zinser. He added
that the surprising thing was the very rapid nature of the
American response to the proposal. The meeting putting it
together took place in the evening, and Zinser received a call
from US diplomats early the next morning. He told them the
group was looking for a compromise. The Americans' response
was: 'Do not attempt it.' In the end it was the French who
pulled the plug on the possibility of a second UN resolution.
On 10 March President Jacques Chirac announced that France
would use its veto in the Security Council to block any such
move, resulting in public acrimony between Paris and
Washington. Few realised that war was now only ten days
away.36
Although the French and German governments were strongly
opposed to war with Iraq, their own intelligence services insisted
that the country had an active weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) programme. The fact that the respected German BND
loudly asserted this, even though Chancellor Gerhard Schroder
was opposed to war, convinced many independent observers
that there must be some hard evidence of Iraqi WMD. The
French DGSE was also telling President Chirac that Iraq had
WMD. However, the sagacious Chirac made his own assessments,
and believed that the Western intelligence services were
deluded. In January 2003 he visited Hans Blix, the head of the
UN Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission, who
had been searching Iraq for evidence of WMD for many years.
Blix recalls that by then his team 'had begun to have some
doubts', although, by and large, even he still thought Iraq was
hiding some weapons. By contrast, Chirac was highly suspicious,
and 'was among the first who doubted the intelligence
reports'. He understood how the Western intelligence agencies
worked, continually bringing their specialists together and devel-