3.5 |
Development of UK strategy and options, September to November 2002
–
the
negotiation of resolution 1441
913.
Sir Jeremy
told the Inquiry:
“The French
and Russians and some others were absolutely determined to
establish
that there
should be no use of force without a specific decision of the UN
Security
Council.
The United States was absolutely determined to resist the need for
a
specific
decision by the United Nations Security Council on the use of
force. Those
two
positions were irreconcilable.”317
914.
Sir Jeremy
told the Inquiry:
“It was
actually quite surprising to me that only the Mexican delegation
said
unequivocally
that they expected that, if it came to the use of force, it would
be solely
the
Security Council that had the authority to take that decision. The
Irish delegate
said
something similar … but not as unequivocally as the Mexicans.
Strangely, the
French and
the Russians, who were, as it were, our antagonists in this
operation in
the
Security Council, were equivocal in what they said in their
explanations of vote,
which they
had to be, because they had tried to negotiate specific language in
1441
and they
had failed to negotiate that.”318
915.
Summing up the
position following adoption of Resolution 1441, Sir Jeremy
said:
“This is
where diplomacy gets clever and, as you can see from the outcome,
from
1441, too
clever for its own good, but diplomacy got clever and it produced a
text in
1441 that
was equivocal on two issues: one, what should happen if Saddam
Hussein
and his
regime did not comply with the terms of 1441; and who should be the
judge
of whether
or not Iraq was complying with the terms of 1441.”319
916.
Sir Jeremy
also told the Inquiry:
“It was not
expressly stated in any operative paragraph of 1441 that the
Security
Council
should meet and decide what to do in the case of non‑compliance,
and that
was where
the French and the Americans met, that there should be a further
stage
of
consideration but that further stage of consideration should not
necessarily mean
that there
would be a further decision of the Security Council if force had to
be used
under the
terms of the whole corpus of resolutions up to that
point.”320
917.
Mr Chaplin
told the Inquiry:
“… there
was a surge of hope after 1441. 1441 was quite a remarkable
achievement
and if the
Security Council could once more come together, as it had before,
and
we could
see a track record going way back into the 90s, that, when the
Security
Council
were united, Saddam Hussein took notice, as indeed he did on this
occasion
317
Public
hearing, 27 November 2002, page 40.
318
Public
hearing, 27 November 2009, pages 47‑48.
319
Public
hearing, 27 November 2009, pages 40‑41.
320
Public
hearing, 27 November 2009, page 41.
363