Ron Manley was born in Cornwall, United Kingdom. He joined the Ministry of Defence in 1960, and worked there for over thirty years in a range of fields related to the development of effective defensive measures against the use of chemical weapons. From 1991-94 he served with the UN commission in Iraq responsible for the technical oversight of Unscom’s operations. From 1993-2001, he worked at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), ultimately as director of its verification division (2000- 2001).

Recent articles

The international convention on chemical weapons is an example of what international cooperation in the global interest can achieve, says Ron G Manley.

Official reports in the United States and Britain confirm that United Nations weapons inspectors were effective in dismantling Iraq’s arsenal in the early 1990s. Ron Manley, who helped supervise much of this process, reads the latest British report and sees how its very success later created political problems for the country’s intelligence services.

The Iraq Survey Group has just published its interim report on the Saddam regime’s weapons programmes and capabilities. Ron Manley, a chemical weapons expert who oversaw the United Nations inspection operations in Iraq in the early 1990s, assesses it.

In both the United States and Britain, there is passionate contest over the legitimacy and honesty of government attempts to justify war with Iraq – especially claims of the existence of active Iraqi chemical weapons programmes. In an interview of profound insight, the man responsible for chemical weapons destruction operations in Iraq from 1991-94 talks to Anthony Barnett and Caspar Henderson of openDemocracy about the true extent of Iraq’s capacity to produce, store and deliver weapons of mass destruction.