3.3 |
Development of UK strategy and options,
April to July 2002
84.
Mr Ricketts
added that three issues had been debated in the Pigott
Group:
“… should
there be specific reference to regime change, e.g. ‘no longer
governed by
its current
leadership’? My own view is that regime change would be a
by-product
of a
military operation not its objective (indeed, I believe such an
objective would
be illegal);
“… should
the ‘end state’ be stated more explicitly as the removal of Iraqi
WMD
or (more
achievable) the removal of the threat posed by Iraqi WMD? There is
a
serious
issue here of the credibility of any objective we declare for a
campaign,
since any
likely future Iraqi regime would presumably feel the same national
security
imperatives
for pursuing WMD programmes as the current regime, given
potential
threats
from Iran. My formula above concentrates on Iraq abiding by its
UNSCR
[UN
Security Council resolution] undertakings. But as an alternative I
think it would
be credible
to aim at an ‘end state’ in which the threat posed by Iraqi WMD
was
removed
(i.e. behaviour change if not regime change);
“… should
there be anything more explicit about a future regime abiding
by
international
norms on the treatment of its own population? I have got ‘law
abiding’
which is
designed to capture that. There is a risk of overloading a
definition of the
‘end state’
with desirable outcomes which cannot be achieved by military
means.”
85.
Mr Michael
Wood, FCO Legal Adviser, responded:
“In the
event of military action, we should need to be satisfied that there
was a
proper
legal basis, and what we say publicly would need to be consistent
with that
86.
Mr Wood agreed
that regime change could not of itself be a lawful objective
of
military
action. He also warned that:
“Some of
the elements in your proposed objective or ‘end state’ would not
justify
military
action … The mere possession of nuclear weapons, or indeed a
general risk
that they
may be used, does not bring into play the right of self-defence …
If, on the
other hand,
the legal basis were to be authorisation by the Security Council,
any
action
would need to be within the four corners of that authorisation. The
Security
Council has
not authorised the use of force to establish ‘a stable and law
abiding
Iraq …
cooperating with the international community’ or ‘regime change’.
It follows
from the
above that the language you propose in … your minute could not
serve as
the public
aim of any military action.”
43
Minute Wood
to Ricketts, 29 April 2002, ‘Iraq: Contingency
Planning’.
19