3.1 |
Development of UK strategy and options, 9/11 to early January
2002
149.
Following a
visit by Mr Blair to Moscow, where there was no movement in
the
Russian
position, Mr Simon McDonald, Mr Straw’s Principal Private
Secretary, wrote
to Sir
David Manning on 11 October stating:
“The
present position is not sustainable. Sanctions are eroding. Iraqi
WMD
programmes
are continuing. The Security Council is divided.”81
150.
Mr McDonald
recorded that another, simple Oil-for-Food rollover resolution
would
be seen as
a victory for Saddam Hussein at the US and the UK’s
expense.
“We need to
convince them [the US] that uniting the Security Council on Iraq is
a
core
component of building a coalition against terrorism, not a
peripheral issue.
We also
need to head them off the temptation to take military action
against Iraq
which would
fracture the coalition.”
151.
Sir David
Manning discussed the UK’s draft resolution, and the need for US
help
to persuade
Russia to support it, with Dr Rice on 12 October. He reported that
it was
unlikely to
be a priority for President Bush in his discussions with President
Vladimir
Putin, the
President of Russia.82
152.
Sir David and
Dr Rice also discussed differences between the UK and the
US
about the
scale of any response if a UK or US pilot was shot down in the
No-Fly Zones.83
The UK had
continuing concerns about the potential US response if a UK or US
pilot
enforcing
the No-Fly Zones (NFZs) was shot down by Iraq.
UK
operations in the No-Fly Zones had been reviewed twice in the
previous two years,
largely at
the request of Mr Robin Cook, the previous Foreign Secretary, and
Lord
Williams of
Mostyn, the Attorney General, and his successor Lord Goldsmith.
Those
reviews and
the outcomes are considered in Section 1.2.
Mr McKane
responded to a letter of 24 August from Mr David Brummell, the
Legal
Secretary
to the Law Officers, on 16 October.84
Mr McKane
stated that, if the UK pulled
out of the
southern No-Fly Zone it would have to be explained; and that “could
only be
politically
sustainable if couched on the basis that the Zone was no longer
required,
presumably
because we judged that Saddam’s behaviour and intent had shifted in
a
satisfactory
direction”.
Mr McKane
added that it would be “very difficult” to maintain the northern
Zone without
the
southern Zone; Turkey would be “unlikely, in a minority of one, to
continue to facilitate”
coalition
patrols. Regular patrols of the northern Zone were “necessary” if
lives were to
be saved.
81
Letter
McDonald to Manning, 11 October 2001, ‘Iraq: Next
Steps’.
82
Letter
Manning to McDonald, 12 October 2001, ‘Iraq: Next
Steps’.
83
Letter
Manning to McDonald, 12 October 2001, ‘Iraq: Desert
Badger’.
84
Letter
McKane to Brummell, 16 October 2001, ‘Iraq: No Fly
Zones’.
339