3.8 |
Development of UK strategy and options, 8 to 20 March
2003
•
finally, a
bit of time. I can keep this going at least until the
weekend.”
But:
•
the UK had
not achieved “any kind of breakthrough. The French,
Germans
and
Russians will undoubtedly home in on the preambular section of the
draft
resolution
and on the whiff of ultimatum in the side statement”;
and
•
there were
“serious questions about the available time”, which the US
would
“not help
us to satisfy”.
382.
Sir Jeremy
concluded that informal consultations would resume the
following
afternoon.
He did “not think he needed detailed instructions if we continue
down this
track for a
further day or two, but grateful for comments and telling arguments
on where
we have
reached so far”.
383.
France
registered its concerns about the way in which the UK
Government
was
describing President Chirac’s comment about a veto.
384.
In addition to
his conversation with Mr Rycroft that morning (described
earlier in
this
Section), Mr Errera called on Mr Ricketts on the evening
of 12 March for “a private
talk on
where things stood” between the UK and France on
Iraq.120
385.
Mr Ricketts
reported to Sir John Holmes that Mr Errera had remonstrated
“about
how British
Ministers had misconstrued President Chirac’s comments”, and that
he
[Ricketts]
had responded by pointing out the prominence of the quote on the
front page
of
Le
Monde. He and
Mr Errera had:
“… agreed
fairly quickly that the immediate crisis would play out with France
and the
UK on
different positions, and that the more productive thing was to look
ahead, and
consider
what lessons we should learn from recent events …”
386.
Mr Errera
had assumed “that the UK would not want to go through again what
we
had been
put through in recent weeks by the Americans”; “nor would it be so
easy for
the UK to
claim that our policy of close alliance gave us real traction over
US policy”.
387.
Mr Ricketts
responded that Iraq had shown up:
“… very
starkly a difference of threat perception, with the UK, Spain,
Italy and some
others …
genuinely believing that the threat of WMD in the hands of a regime
like
Iraq, in a
world inhabited by the likes of Al Qaida, was a worse prospect than
the
risks of
military action to deal with it … Ministers were genuinely
convinced of the
rightness
of the policy, it was not poodleism …”
120
Letter
Ricketts to Holmes, 13 March 2003, ‘France and Iraq’.
467