3.3 |
Development of UK strategy and options,
April to July 2002
going to
back out because the going gets tough. On the other hand, here are
the
difficulties
and this is why I think the UN route is the right way to
go’.”
456.
Mr Blair was
“absolutely sure” that was how President Bush had interpreted
the
457.
Asked whether
the language he had used in his Note was wholly consistent
with
his
statement for the Inquiry, in which he had written that he had not
offered the US
a blank
cheque, Mr Blair told the Inquiry that he “did not think the
Americans were
in any
doubt at all about what was being said”.177
He could
not recall all the precise
conversations,
but “this [the Note] was entirely consistent also” with what he
was
saying publicly.
458.
Mr Blair told
the Inquiry that he was:
“… trying
to get them very substantially to change their position. Their
position had
been ‘we
are going to do it’. Then their position had been because I had
asked them
‘Okay with
an ultimatum.’ Now their position with huge opposition within his
system
was going
to be ‘We are going to put this back in the lap of the United
Nations’.
“Some of
the people in his Administration were saying ‘You are crazy. You
are going
to put it
back into the bureaucracy of the UN they will swallow it up. You
will be back
to all this
playing around. In the meantime you have this guy doing what he is
doing,
sitting
there and nothing happening.’
“So I was
having to persuade him to take a view radically different from any
of the
people in
his Administration so what I was saying to him is ‘I am going to be
with you
in handling
it this way. I am not going to push you down this path and then
back out
when it
gets too hot politically, because it is going to get hot for me
politically, very,
very much
so.’
“I did this
because I believed in it. I thought it was the right thing to do …
frankly,
whatever
phrasing I used, I accept entirely I was saying ‘I am going to be
with
America in
handling this. However, we should handle it this way’. That was in
the
end what
they agreed to do. The single thing that is most important over
anything
else in
this whole business … is that [resolution] 1441 [agreed in
November
2002]
represented a huge compromise on his part and a huge opportunity
for the
international
community to get its act together.”178
176
Public
hearing, 21 January 2011, page 48.
177
Public
hearing, 21 January 2011, page 49.
178
Public
hearing, 21 January 2011, pages 49-51.
79