The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
223.
The key risks
identified by Mr Chaplin were:
•
“immediate
risks of retaliation against UK interests (ranging from political
and
economic
retaliation against UK interests to … terrorist
attack)”;
•
“chronic
instability in Iraq” in the medium term;
•
“a repeat
of the Suez debacle” in the longer term, “which apart from its
short-
term
effects (eg sweeping away the Hashemite regime in Iraq) changed
Arab
popular
opinion towards Britain for a generation”; and
•
“serious
implications for the success of the global counter-terrorism
campaign”.
“These
risks can be reduced significantly by careful preparation. The
three
conditions
spelled out to the Americans by the Prime Minister are
interrelated.
To build
a coalition for military action and get domestic and international
opinion
on side
we need:
•
clear and
publicly usable evidence that the Iraq WMD threat is real
…;
•
a clear
effort to exhaust all other avenues, principally the UN route. This
is
likely to
be necessary for us to establish a legal base for military
action;
•
visible
improvement in the Israel/Palestine situation to give us
some
protection
against the arguments of double standards.
“These …
will … increase the chances of Saddam Hussein finally backing down
on
inspections,
which I believe is possible once he sees no
alternative.”
225.
Mr Chaplin
concluded:
“The Prime
Minister has promised President Bush UK support for military action
if
these
conditions are met. There is no commitment yet to UK
participation
in military
action, nor
any collective Ministerial discussion of this yet. As well as
urging the US
to do their
political homework … we need to re-emphasise at the highest levels
that
the three
conditions we have set are not just desirable in themselves for any
action,
but [are]
essential for UK participation, on whatever scale.”
226.
The Cabinet
Office paper ‘Iraq:
Conditions for Military Action’ was issued
on 19 July,
to inform Mr Blair’s meeting on 23 July with Mr Straw, Mr
Hoon,
Lord Goldsmith
and key officials to discuss Iraq.
227.
The Cabinet
Office paper invited Ministers to agree:
•
the
objective for any military action;
•
to engage
the US on the need to set military plans within a
realistic
political
strategy, including “creating the conditions necessary to
justify
government
military action”, before military plans were presented
to
President
Bush on 4 August; and
42