3.8 |
Development of UK strategy and options, 8 to 20 March
2003
•
Timing
“would be difficult, but he would try to get some flexibility” if
the first two
issues
“fell into place”.28
92.
If
Mr Blair knew he had Chilean and Mexican support, the UK would
share the ideas
with France
and Russia.
93.
President
Lagos’ response was positive although he did not agree to support
the
resolution.
Mr Blair offered to visit Chile if that would be
helpful.
94.
Mr Campbell
wrote that President Lagos had said he was “eighty per cent there
but
worried
about France and Russia”.29
95.
By 10
March, President Bush’s position was hardening. He was
very
reluctant
to delay action.
96.
Reporting a
conversation at 9.30pm on 10 March, Mr Straw told Sir David
Manning
that
Mr Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, thought that there
were seven solid
votes, and
uncertainty about Mexico, Chile and Pakistan.30
If there
were fewer than nine,
the second
resolution should not be put to the vote.
97.
Mr Straw
had responded that “he was increasingly coming to the view that
we
should not
push the matter to a vote if we were going to be vetoed”; but that
had not yet
been agreed
by Mr Blair.
98.
When
Mr Blair spoke to President Bush, they discussed the “seven
solid votes”
for the
resolution.31
Mr Blair
planned to speak to President Musharraf the following
day.
Mr Blair
outlined the tests and his efforts to secure support from Chile and
Mexico.
They would
not support a Spanish proposal simply to affirm resolution
1441.
99.
In his account
of the conversation, Mr Campbell wrote that Mr Blair had
done most
of the
talking.32
President
Bush thought that there were “seven votes solid ‘locked
up’,
but
Pakistan and the Latins were difficult”; and that President Chirac
was “trying to get
us to the
stage where we would not put [the resolution] to a vote because we
would be
so worried
about losing”. Mr Campbell added that he “could sense in his
voice and the
manner of
the discussion that [President] Bush was less emollient than
yesterday”.
100.
In answer to a
question from President Bush about the timeframe for his
proposal,
Mr Blair
had “said they [Chile and Mexico] would want to kick us back a few
days as a
way of
showing they got something out of this”. Mr Blair had argued
that if Chile and
28
Letter
Rycroft to McDonald, 10 March 2003, ‘Iraq: Prime Minister’s Phone
Calls with Lagos, Bush and
Aznar, 10
March’.
29
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to Iraq.
Hutchinson,
2012.
30
Letter
Straw to Manning, 11 March 2003, ‘Conversation with US Secretary of
State, 10 March’.
31
Letter
Rycroft to McDonald, 10 March 2003, ‘Iraq: Prime Minister’s Phone
Calls with Lagos, Bush and
Aznar, 10
March’.
32
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to Iraq.
Hutchinson,
2012.
417