3.2 |
Development of UK strategy and options, January to April 2002 –
“axis of evil” to Crawford
to
Sir Michael Jay and senior colleagues offering his views on
the direction of policy
“I have
hesitated to offer my own [views], in the knowledge that contacts
between
London and
Washington will already be intensive and rightly held close. But
I
sense a
danger of us becoming too predictable. I do not advocate a US march
on
Baghdad.
But I do think we need to box more cleverly, not least to retain
leverage
in Washington.”
106.
Mr Sawers
stated containment had worked for 10 years but the price had
been
high.
Iraq’s WMD activities were “still without doubt going ahead” and
Saddam Hussein’s
regime
would “remain an obstacle to every single Western objective in the
Middle East”.
In his view
the UK needed to say:
“… clearly
and consistently that our goal is Regime Change – for the sake of
stability
in the
Middle East, for the Iraqi people, and for the goal of controlling
the spread
of WMD.”
107.
Setting out a
list of other countries where regime change had been and remained
a
goal of UK
policy, Mr Sawers wrote:
“Whether or
not we actually express it is purely a matter of tactics. So the
lawyers
and
peaceniks should not prevent us from saying what we really want in
Iraq. And
by
associating ourselves with Bush’s heartfelt objective of seeing
Saddam removed,
we will
be given more houseroom in Washington to ask the awkward
questions
about
how.
“And there
are many such questions. What is the plan? How long would it take
for
a direct
confrontation to succeed? How do we retain the support of our
regional
friends …
If we were to build up the Kurds and Shia as proxies, what
assurances
would we
have to give them that we would not let them down yet again? How
would
we keep the
Iranians from meddling? How do we preserve Iraq’s territorial
integrity …
How would
we provide for stability after Saddam and his cronies were
killed?
“All these
are much more important questions than legality, the Arab street
and
other hardy
Foreign Office perennials. On a tactical point, I recall Colin
Powell [the
US
Secretary of State, who had been Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff from
1988 to
1993] … in 1993 saying that one of the blessings of retirement was
that he
would never
have to listen to another British legal opinion. Presenting
Washington
with one
now will both irritate and weaken him. We can look for the legal
basis once
we have
decided what to do, as we did in Kosovo.”
33
Teleletter
Sawers to Jay, 21 February 2002, ‘Iraq: Policy’.
405