10.1 |
Reconstruction: March 2003 to June 2004
185.
Depending on
the circumstances, the UK could quite quickly be faced with “a
grey
area of
possible activities which could move ORHA beyond the UK’s
understanding of an
Occupying
Power’s rights and obligations”, perhaps including:
•
initiation
of a small business loan programme;
•
abolition
of Iraqi Government restrictions on private business;
•
significant
changes to the exchange or trade regimes;
•
significant
changes to the structure of the state budget; and
•
SSR.
186.
In addition,
the US Department of Defense (DoD) continued to consider that
the
absence of
a resolution need not prevent “thorough-going political and
economic reform,
including
in areas the UK would consider to be clearly outside the UK’s
understanding of
an
Occupying Power’s rights and responsibilities”.
187.
The IPU
concluded that, while ORHA was “in many ways a
sub-optimal
organisation
for delivering the UK’s Phase IV objectives”, it was “the only game
in town”.
There was
“ample scope” to use UK secondees to exert leverage over US Phase
IV
planning
and implementation.
188.
The IPU
recommended that “the UK should continue to commit resources
to
ORHA where
we can add real value and exert influence over emerging US
perspectives
and plans”.
Only by “full, constructive engagement” could the UK “hope to shape
the
outcomes in
ways that stay within UK red lines”.
189.
The IPU also
recommended that the UK should:
•
continue to
make clear to the US the limits within which the UK, including
UK
personnel
within ORHA, could operate;
•
seek close
consultation on ORHA’s plans, to ensure that they did not cross
UK
“red
lines”; and
•
subject to
those points, confirm Major General Tim Cross, the senior
UK
secondee to
ORHA, as Deputy to Lt Gen Garner.
190.
The Inquiry
has seen no response to the IPU paper.
191.
Mr Straw
considered the question of UK support for ORHA at the first meeting
of
the AHMGIR
on 10 April.
192.
On 1 April,
Mr Straw described the UK’s commitment to reconstruction in a
speech
to the
Newspaper Society Annual Conference:
“Today our
primary focus has to be the military campaign … But we have given
–
and we are
giving – a huge amount of thought to the post-conflict situation
…
“I don’t
underestimate the scale of the task. Saddam has led his country to
ruin …
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