The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
484.
Having seen
the telegram reporting the conversation between Mr Straw
and
Secretary
Powell, Mr Wood wrote to Mr Straw’s office to remind him of the
advice in the
FCO
paper,
‘Iraq:
Legal Background’, including that:
“… we would
receive no support for reliance on the 1990 resolution authorising
the
use of
force prior to Desert Storm in the absence of a further decision by
the Council
(whether by
Presidential statement or by new resolution) that Iraq was in
flagrant
violation
of its obligations under the cease-fire resolution.
“… The
Attorney General’s advice will need to be sought at the appropriate
stage
before
Ministerial decisions on actions or public
statements.”173
485.
Sir Michael
Wood told the Inquiry that was the first of a series of occasions
on
which he
sent such a note:
“I was
obviously quite concerned by what I saw him [Mr Straw] saying …
often
reports are
not accurate. They are summaries, they are short. He may well not
have
said it in
quite the form it came out in the telegram, but whenever I saw
something
like that,
whether from the Foreign Secretary or from the Prime Minister or
from
officials …
I would do a note just to make sure they understood the legal
position.
“This is
just an example of quite a few notes, but it certainly wasn’t my
impression
that the
Foreign Secretary really misunderstood the legal position at that
stage.”174
“This was
quite early. It was before it had got into the bloodstream … of the
Foreign
Office and
others, what the legal position was. So it was necessary just to
remind
people of
what was the accepted view.”175
487.
Asked about Mr
Wood’s minute, Mr Straw told the Inquiry:
“What we
were seeking to do – that was just before Crawford – was to
persuade
the
Americans to go down the UN route. There were still a number of
views about
whether or
not [resolutions] 678 and 687 could ‘revive’ the authority for
military
action. As
is well-known, I had told the Prime Minister that my view was that
we had
to go down
the UN route in any event, but I also had to keep our negotiating
position
protected
publicly, and that was why I used the words that I
did.”176
488.
Preliminary
discussions on the US and UK interpretations of the legal
authorities
for the use
of force took place at the end of March.
173
Minute
Wood to Private Secretary [FCO], 26 March 2002,
‘Iraq’.
174
Public
hearing, 26 January 2010, page 16.
175
Public
hearing, 26 January 2010, page 17.
176
Public
hearing, 8 February 2010, pages 3-4.
474