The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
“Nonetheless,
I was also aware that the very split in international opinion meant
that
we were
absolutely at the mercy of events … So as we left the Azores, I
knew the
die was
cast. I was aware of my isolation … my total dependence on things
going
right not
wrong … What’s more this was the first time I would be committing
troops
to an
action to topple a regime where we would be the junior partner,
where we
would not
be in charge of the arrangements …
“… I was
calm … I was doing what I thought was right. But … I wished I
wasn’t
doing it.”
701.
Mr Campbell
wrote in his diaries that, on the way to the Azores, Mr Blair
was “still
angry at
the way the US had handled it” and that he had said: “If we had
been totally in
charge of
this, I am absolutely sure we could have won the French round.”
Mr Campbell
“felt the
US and France both, for different reasons did not want to meet on
this”.243
702.
Commenting on
the Summit, Mr Campbell wrote:
“Everyone
kept going on about it being ‘the last effort for a political
solution’.
But there
was more than a slight feeling of going through the
motions.”
703.
Mr Campbell
also wrote that Mr Blair “was still saying it was the right
thing to do”
and that he
“had lost count of how many times” he “had heard those same
words”.
704.
In an
interview broadcast on CNN
on 16 March,
during the Azores Summit,
President
Chirac said that he hoped the Summit would recognise that
inspections
provided an
effective system “to achieve our common goal … the disarmament of
Iraq,
elimination
and destruction of her weapons of mass
destruction”.244
705.
Asked about
his bottom line for a compromise, President Chirac replied that
was
a matter
for the inspectors. In his view, the Security Council had
unanimously:
“… decided
to disarm Iraq peacefully through inspections for as long as
the
inspectors
consider this possible.”
“We see
today … that a lot of progress has been achieved … admittedly we
haven’t
reached the
goal, but the inspectors consider … that we have the possibility
of
reaching
our goal without waging war. That is the goal I am seeking. I am
totally
ready to
accept all the practical arrangements that the inspectors will
suggest …”
243
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to
Iraq. Hutchinson,
2012.
244
Embassy of
the Republic of France in the UK, Interview
given by M. Jacques Chirac to CNN and CBS,
Paris
16.03.2003.
524