The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
•
There
should be a process to identify and resolve “logjams”.
•
The UK
needed “urgently to think through:
{{what are
the key priorities? (Infrastructure? Water? Power?)
{{what are
the blockages?
{{therefore,
what needs to be done by whom and when? What large
scale
projects
were needed?
{{and how
much will that cost?
{{We
should ‘think big’ – e.g., if a new power station was needed,
identify
where, how
big, how much it would cost and let the contracts
asap.”
428.
Baroness Amos
commented that “the Prime Minister’s thinking seemed to be
that
the UK
would put in the people; US the money”, and that he did not seem to
accept that
President
Bush might not be able to produce immediate funding.
429.
Baroness Amos
stated that DFID should think “carefully but urgently” about
the
concerns
and proposals presented by Mr Blair. DFID should not simply
“reflect back”
Mr Blair’s
proposals, if those were not exactly what were needed. This could
be a very
good
opportunity to address (unspecified) difficult issues.
430.
Baroness Amos
added that she did not believe that the main problem with the
CPA
was a lack
of people, or that it could be solved by putting more people in. It
was more
likely to
be a lack of strategic thinking.
431.
Baroness Amos
also reported that, after the meeting with Mr Blair, she had
agreed
with
Mr Hoon and Sir Michael Jay that a cross-departmental paper
should be produced
for the
next meeting of the AHMGIR, addressing the points raised by
Mr Blair.
432.
Later on 3
June, Baroness Amos sent Mr Blair a report on her visit to
Washington
and New
York the previous week.242
She
reported that:
“… US
inter-agency conflicts are making for bad policy on Iraq, with
negligible
co‑ordination
and a potentially dangerous lack of leadership. There is no
strategic
direction,
and no sense of what the US wants to achieve.”
433.
The solution
was for the UK “to set out a clear vision for Phase IV, sell it
to
President
Bush (and hence Rumsfeld) and use it to build alliances beyond the
Coalition”.
434.
Baroness Amos
also reported that the World Bank and the IMF had started
work
on a
reconstruction needs assessment. Work was Washington-based, but
experts were
ready to
visit Iraq “as soon as the security situation
permits”.
435.
Baroness Amos
confirmed that she would visit Iraq shortly. To maintain
the
momentum on
Iraq, she planned that Mr Benn would visit in July and
Mr Chakrabarti
in September.
242
Letter Amos
to Blair, 3 June 2003, ‘Iraq Reconstruction: Next
Steps’.
78