10.1 |
Reconstruction: March 2003 to June 2004
to the work
of the military commanders in the South. I would be ‘accountable
directly
to
Ambassador Bremer’.
“But there
was also a covering letter, marinated in subtleties. From a
Whitehall
perspective,
it read, despite [Ambassador] Bremer’s decision to create 18
Provincial
Co-ordinators
who reported directly to him, ‘the UK Supremo in the South
concept
611.
The Inquiry
has not seen that covering letter.
612.
Mr Blair
told the Inquiry:
“I was
always very clear with our people out there, ‘If you have got a
real problem,
pick up the
phone, if necessary, and if you start to get messed around
with
bureaucracy,
come to me directly’.” 336
613.
Sir Hilary
told the Inquiry that he did not take up Mr Blair’s offer to
call him, but
said that
his reporting telegrams were directed at No.10 and Ministers
(rather than
middle-ranking
officials).337
614.
On his third
day in Iraq, Sir Hilary called on Ambassador Bremer in
Baghdad:
“… he
[Bremer] didn’t give me any instructions, so I offered him three
priorities,
which he
agreed with. The first was I needed to find out what Baghdad’s
priorities
were, which
we didn’t know in the South. The second was to make sure that
our
priorities
… in the South were consistent with Baghdad’s priorities, and the
third was
to change
the location of where we worked, which was in every sense dangerous
to
health, and
for that I got tremendous support from Baghdad.
“Ultimately,
we continued really to have no direction
from Baghdad, which was a pity
in one
sense but a blessing in another, because unless I had an
instruction not to do
something,
I felt able to do whatever we were able to do.”338
615.
In his memoir,
Sir Hilary wrote:
“I was
particularly surprised and dismayed in my first encounters in
Baghdad with
the lack of
interest in the political and social situation in the four southern
provinces,
and by
Bremer’s declared intention to concentrate exclusively on
Baghdad.” 339
335
Synnott
H. Bad Days in
Basra: My Turbulent Time as Britain’s Man in Southern
Iraq. I B
Tauris & Co
Ltd.,
2008.
336
Public
hearing, 29 January 2010, page 189.
337
Public
hearing, 9 December 2009, pages 14-15.
338
Public
hearing, 19 December 2009, pages 44-45.
339
Synnott
H. Bad Days in
Basra: My Turbulent Time as Britain’s Man in Southern
Iraq. I B
Tauris & Co
Ltd.,
2008.
107