3.2 |
Development of UK strategy and options, January to April 2002 –
“axis of evil” to Crawford
being
removed from power. Blair was also wedded to the proposition that,
to have
influence
in Washington, it was necessary to hug the Americans close
…”
675.
Sir
Christopher wrote that “Support for regime change caused deep
concern inside
the Foreign
Office.” There were questions about the legal basis and
uncertainties about
the
consequences of action. Those were tough questions on which the UK
wanted the
US to
focus. In his conversation with Mr Wolfowitz on 17 March, Sir
Christopher had
taken his
cue from Sir David Manning’s exchanges with Dr Rice,
and:
“To
reinforce my credentials as something to say worth listening to, I
emphasised the
Prime
Minister’s commitment to regime change. I wanted Wolfowitz to know
that we
were
starting from the same premise, and that in Britain it was not
without political
cost. It
was the diplomacy of ‘Yes, but …”
676.
Sir
Christopher described the approach as identifying tough questions
which
would need
to be answered if the US wanted coalition partners and support from
the
international
community, including the need for a “clever plan which convinced
people
that there
was a legal basis for toppling Saddam”.
677.
Sir
Christopher told the Inquiry that, in his speech at College Station
on 7 April
2002, Mr
Blair had tried to:
“… draw the
lessons of 9/11 and apply them to the situation in Iraq, which led,
I
think, not
inadvertently, but deliberately, to a conflation of the threat by
Usama Bin
Laden and
Saddam Hussein.”249
678.
Sir
Christopher added that the speech represented “a tightening of the
UK/US
alliance
and the degree of convergence on the danger that Saddam Hussein
presented”.
It drew on
Mr Blair’s speech on humanitarian intervention in Chicago in 1999,
and “was
a rather
sophisticated argument for pre-emption”, that Saddam Hussein’s
record was
“too bad”
and the potential threat he presented could not be
ignored.
679.
Sir
Christopher Meyer told the Inquiry that by the time Mr Blair and
President Bush
met at
Crawford:
“… they
weren’t there to talk about containment or sharpening sanctions.
There
had been a
sea change in attitudes in the US Administration to which the
British
Government,
progressively from October [2001] onwards, had to adapt and
make
up its
mind where it stood.”250
680.
In his
statement, Sir Jeremy Greenstock wrote:
“I was
aware of the theoretical option to promote regime change through
the use
of force;
but it was not until February or March 2002 that I heard that
serious
249
Public
hearing, 26 November 2009, pages 29-30.
250
Public
hearing, 26 November 2009, page 37.
511