The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
Cabinet
Ministers. GWB [President Bush] suggested he might be better off
without
them. He
clearly could not fathom why the Road Map mattered so much. He
had
been
reluctant because of Arafat. He then said ‘Tell Alastair, like I’m
telling my boys,
that I
don’t want to read a word about this until I’ve said it. It is in
our interests that
I come
out and say this, and it’s clear I mean it.’
“TB said
the French thought they had lost the initiative and were getting
worried. He
felt we had
to keep in very close touch with Mexico and Chile over the weekend.
He
was worried
the French would come up with a counter-proposal and win them
over.”
“They kept
going back to the Parliamentary arithmetic. TB said it was knife
edge …
He said I
know you think I have gone mad about the Road Map but it really
will help.
“Bush said
that Rumsfeld had asked him to apologise to TB.
“He [Bush]
said … After our vote, if we win, the order goes to Rumsfeld to
get
their
troops to move. Ops begin. He said he would not be doing a
declaration of
war.
Wednesday 8pm in the region … ‘They go …’ He intended to wait as
long as
possible
before saying the troops were in action.”150
490.
In his memoir,
Mr Blair wrote that he and President Bush were due to meet in
the
Azores on
16 March “partly to bind in Spain and Portugal who were both
supportive and
both of
whose Prime Ministers were under enormous heat from hostile
parliamentary
and public
opinion”, and that:
“It was
clear now that action was inevitable barring Saddam’s voluntary
departure.
George had
agreed to give him an ultimatum to quit. There was no expectation
he
491.
Reporting
developments in New York on 13 March, Sir Jeremy
Greenstock
warned that
the UK tests had attracted no support, and that the US might be
ready
to call a
halt to the UN process on 15 March.
492.
Sir Jeremy
Greenstock reported overnight on 13/14 March that:
•
In a
meeting with the “undecided six” he had hosted, the “Latins [had]
come
down hard
against the UK compromise package”. The main objections
had
included
the “perceived authorisation of force in the draft resolution” and
a
desire to
wait for UNMOVIC’s own list of key tasks which would issue early
the
following
week.
150
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to
Iraq. Hutchinson,
2012.
151
Blair
T. A
Journey.
Hutchinson, 2010.
484