The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
enforcement
of existing resolutions, “particularly the Syrian pipeline”.
Tightening the
sanctions
regime would be “difficult to achieve and did little to prevent
confrontation”,
which was
now the “basic aim”.
78.
Mr Paganon and
Mr Goulty agreed on the need “to maintain P5 [the five
Permanent
Members of
the Security Council] unity”.
79.
Mr Patey said
that if the:
“…
consensus were broken, military action would be more likely. The US
would
be prepared
to act on their own if necessary, but would be inhibited if there
were a
viable UN
track in train.”
80.
Mr Paganon
agreed that it was vital the P5 and Arab states sent the same
tough
message to
Saddam Hussein.
“… in the
meantime we should all send the same message to the Americans,
that
we should
continue to go down the UN route, and that if this did not work, we
would
then have a
better pretext for dealing with WMD through military
action.”
82.
Sir John
Holmes advised on 19 February that France was “particularly
concerned”
about what
President Bush’s “axis of evil” implied for US
policy.30
It was
ready to
recognise
that “differences with the Americans” were “more about means
than
ends”;
but they would want to work with the UK “to keep American
action within the
international system”.
83.
France had
“worried since the end of the Cold War that American power
was
becoming
disproportionate”. The main French concerns following President
Bush’s “axis
of evil”
speech were that the US:
•
would be
“increasingly tempted towards unilateral action without consulting
allies
or the
UN”;
•
saw
“military action as more or less the sole response to terrorism
and
proliferation”;
and
•
was
confusing the two problems of terrorism and
proliferation.
84.
The French
view was that:
“… as well
as clamping down hard (but in accordance with international law)
on
unacceptable
actions, we also need to address their political economic,
cultural
and
military causes … [A]scribing them simply to a national or
individual propensity
for
wrongdoing is inadequate. There are reasons beyond mere wickedness
why
bad regimes
come to power and survive: simply keeping the lid on the ambitions
of
30
Telegram
123 Paris to FCO London, 19 February 2002, ‘US Foreign Policy:
France and the Axis of Evil’.
400