3.7 |
Development of UK strategy and options, 1 February to 7 March
2003
from “swing
countries”. Mr Blair wanted a report to the Council on 7 March
but there
were
indications that Dr Blix might want longer. If a majority in
the Security Council
supported more
time, Mr Blair would be in “a very difficult position”.
Mr Straw told
Secretary
Powell that an agreed strategy was needed, including tabling a side
document
with the
resolution “containing our list of demands”.
676.
Concluding the
conversation, Mr Straw stated that if “extraordinarily Iraq
complied,
the UK
could not go to war”. Secretary Powell was reported to have replied
that “in
the end,
there was only one difference between us: President Bush had
already made
his
decision”. If Mr Blair’s “efforts did not permit the UK to be
there, Bush would still
go alone”.
677.
Following the
first conversation with Secretary Powell, Mr Ricketts
advised
Mr Straw
that the US draft would be “much more difficult for middle ground
opinion”
to accept.188
Mr Ricketts
wrote that it was the UK, not the Americans, which
needed
the resolution;
and that the Greenstock text delivered what the UK needed
and would
be more
difficult to oppose. It was “more compatible with building a case
in the
Security Council
that the issue is a simple one of whether or not Iraq is in
compliance”.
678.
Mr Ricketts
advised Mr Straw to go back to Secretary Powell to press the
UK view.
679.
Mr Ricketts
suggested that the UK might also “move away from the concept
of
tabling
lists of benchmarks”. He wrote that the work with the US delegation
in New York
had “shown
up how difficult it is to isolate questions which are susceptible
[to] yes/no
answers in
the time-frame we need”; and that there was a risk that it would
“play into
the hands
of the ‘more time’ merchants”. Mr Ricketts suggested that it
might be better to
draw on the
work that had been done to “set out in a co-ordinated way some
illustrative
tests such
as the destruction of rocket motors or producing specified people
for interview
in
acceptable conditions”.
680.
Mr Ricketts
concluded that would be “more compatible with the approach in
the
Jeremy
Greenstock draft resolution of making our case on the basis of
whether Iraq was
in full
co-operation or not”.
681.
In his second
conversation with Secretary Powell on 20 February, Mr Straw
stated
that the UK
Government “was signed up to the Greenstock language. If countries
voted
for that …
they would … be voting to let us go to war.”189
682.
In response to
questioning from Secretary Powell about whether he was sure
that
was the
right call, Mr Straw said that “we were sure that the
Greenstock language would
do the
trick”.
188
Minute
Ricketts to Private Secretary, 20 February 2003, ‘Iraq: UN
Tactics’.
189
Letter
McDonald to Manning, 20 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Conversation with
Colin Powell, 20 February’.
299