3.8 | Development of UK strategy and options, 8 to 20 March 2003

seemed to be more common ground, then it was possible that you could have found

some kind of common resolution.”164

513. Asked whether Ministers had been over-optimistic in tabling the second resolution,

thinking that France and Russia would agree to it, Sir John Holmes told the Inquiry:

“It was always an optimistic approach to think you would get a second resolution and

you would get nine votes for it, as the struggle to get those votes demonstrated very

clearly in the weeks that followed.”165

514. Sir John Holmes stated that France thought the timelines and tests in the draft

resolution were “deliberately impossible” for Saddam Hussein to pass and were “not

a way of actually avoiding war but was simply a way of legitimising it”.166 That was why

it was “so strongly opposed”.

515. Asked if there were any circumstances in which France might have supported a

second resolution authorising the use of force, Sir John said that, by that stage, “it would

have taken something pretty dramatic”, such as a find by the inspectors or reckless

behaviour by Saddam Hussein, to change the mind of France.167

516. Mr Straw told the Inquiry that, before President Chirac’s statement of 10 March,

the UK had “got the three African states on board, we thought we had the Chileans

and the Mexicans” although the negotiations were finely balanced.168 The moment

when he did not think it would be possible to achieve a second resolution was when

he had “turned on the television” and seen “President Chirac saying that, whatever the

circumstances, France would veto a second resolution”.

517. Later, Mr Straw took a more qualified view:

“… our judgement was that we thought that the three African states were highly

likely to support a resolution. The problem was between … Chile and Mexico and

President Fox and President Lagos [each] looking over [his] … shoulder at the

other one. My own view is – not that – in the absence of the Chirac ‘veto’ statement

on 10 March, we would have got their support, but it would have been much

more probable.”169

518. Mr Straw also stated:

“… the great danger, which we felt we faced, was that, if you didn’t bring this to a

conclusion one way or the other quite quickly, then the whole strategy of diplomacy

164 Private hearing, 24 June 2010, page 86.

165 Public hearing, 29 June 2010, page 38.

166 Public hearing, 29 June 2010, pages 42-43.

167 Public hearing, 29 June 2010, pages 43-44.

168 Public hearing, 21 January 2010, page 83.

169 Public hearing, 8 February 2010, page 88.

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