3.8 |
Development of UK strategy and options, 8 to 20 March
2003
maximum
co-operation with the inspectors. Russia could not accept a
proposition
giving a
green light to war.
176.
President
Putin also warned of the risks of military action.
177.
Following
Mr Blair’s discussion with President Putin on 7 March (see
Section 3.7),
Sir Roderic
Lyne, British Ambassador to Russia, had advised Mr Ricketts on
10 March
that he had
been considering whether there was “anything to be done at the 11th
hour
to turn the
Russians on our current text”.61
He had
concluded that Russia would “only
move if”:
“•
the French
moved;
•
and/or
major amendments were made to the resolution;
•
or if the
Americans had brokered a bilateral deal so heavily weighted
towards
Russian
interests that it outweighed the downside of splitting from
the
French position.”
178.
Sir Roderic
added that “the Americans have now left it too late”. President
Putin
did not
“want a breach with the Americans, for well known reasons; and this
explains the
repeated
Russian encouragement … to just go ahead and do it in a way which
does not
involve
Russia in approving war”.
179.
Stating that
he was “deliberately over-simplifying”, Sir Roderic advised
that
President
Putin was not now going to “put himself out” or “take risks”,
because:
•
The
Americans had “not picked up Russian hints from mid-2001 onwards
that
there is a
price tag attached”.
•
The
Americans “… did not cut the Russians in on the discussion.
They
proclaimed
the ‘axis of evil’, which worries the Russians mightily; they
deployed
their
forces; they then demanded acceptance of their resolution within a
tight
time-frame
and without a smoking gun or trigger. If the Russians buy into
this,
what else
are they buying into? War on N. Korea or Iran? (It’s not
impossible
that the
Russians could be brought to subscribe to a tougher approach
to
proliferation,
but they would need to be carried along stage by stage.) So
the
Russians
are very susceptible to the French line of argument that the
Americans
are trying
to drag us down a very dangerous road … and the time to make
a
stand is
now.”
•
Russia had
“not been given its due reward for supporting the Americans
on
various
issues, or for not opposing them on others”.
•
Russia
wanted freedom to act on Chechnya.
•
Russian
domestic opinion thought France and Germany were right to stand
firm
against the
US.
61
Email Lyne
to Ricketts, 10 March 2003, ‘Iraq/Russia’.
433