3.3 |
Development of UK strategy and options,
April to July 2002
to go
this route if he thinks it is the key to your active support. If he
does, it will transform
the
domestic and wider international context.”
478.
Sir David
recorded the conversations with both Dr Rice and President Bush in
full.
479.
Sir David
discussed the record of his conversation with President Bush
with
Mr Blair
at Chequers on 31 July. He told the Inquiry:
“… I saw
the Prime Minister … at Chequers, and I said to him that I did not
think
a return to
the UN route was a lost cause and it was worth his while to
continue
to press
the President to go down the UN route. Provisionally an agreement
was
reached …
for the Prime Minister to go and see the President as soon as
the
summer
holidays were over, and this is what indeed he
did.”188
480.
Sir David
Manning told the Inquiry that he felt his meetings with Dr Rice
and
President
Bush in Washington at the end of July, when he delivered Mr
Blair’s
Note, had
reopened a debate in the US that might have been
closed.
481.
Sir David
Manning told the Inquiry:
“… I was
quite clear, when I was sent to Washington at the end of July to
talk about
the state
of the debate in America, that … the United States could take
military
action if
it wished to, but we could not do so unless the United States
decided to go
back to the
United Nations.”189
482.
Subsequently,
Sir David Manning told the Inquiry that he had thought “at the
end
of July”
that “[President] Bush had probably made up his mind he was just
going to go
and attack
Iraq at some point over the next few months … and that he had
probably
subscribed
… to the view that the UN was a distraction”.190
President
Bush had asked to
see him
because of the point he had made to Dr Rice that the UK could not
participate
without
going back to the UN. While he was “wary about making this claim”,
he had
returned
from Washington “feeling that it had reopened a debate that might
have been
pretty much
closed”.
483.
Sir David
drew attention to the emphasis he had put on the need for a
new
UN
resolution in his discussions.
“It was
quite clear to me in the summer of 2002 that the only way we
could
accompany
the Americans in a shift in policy that might conceivably lead to
regime
change was
if they opted to go through the United Nations and if there were a
new
Security
Council resolution …
188
Public
hearing, 30 November 2009, pages 22-23.
189
Public
hearing, 30 November 2009, pages 40-41.
190
Private
hearing, 24 June 2010, pages 55-56.
83