3.8 |
Development of UK strategy and options, 8 to 20 March
2003
706.
Asked if he
would be prepared to accept a 30- or 60-day deadline,
President
Chirac
stated that the inspectors’ advice must be accepted:
“We have
given them a mission and we have a moral and political obligation
to
accept
their advice or else explain why we are not following it. But if we
don’t follow
their
advice, then only the Security Council can decide not
to.”
707.
President
Chirac added that it was in that spirit that France, Germany and
Russia,
“supported
today by China”, had proposed a Ministerial meeting of the Security
Council
to discuss
the inspectors’ proposed work programme.
708.
President
Chirac accepted that US and British military pressure had
achieved
a shift
in Iraq’s position, adding that he considered:
“… the
Americans have already won … without firing a shot… we should be
thankful
to them for
exercising that effective pressure. But that doesn’t mean that we
have
to wage
war if it isn’t necessary. And today, I don’t think it’s
necessary.”
709.
Asked if it
would have sent a stronger signal if France had also sent
troops,
President
Chirac replied that “from the very beginning” France felt that the
process
of
resolution 1441 “didn’t embrace the possibility of war”. That was
why France was
“refusing
today, and I mean today, the prospect of war”. If the strategy (of
inspections)
failed,
France would “refuse no solution, including war”.
710.
Asked if his
repeated vow to veto had strengthened and emboldened
Saddam
Hussein,
President Chirac replied:
“I don’t
think so at all and, in any case, it isn’t a relevant problem today
… there isn’t
a majority
on the Security Council for war …”
711.
Asked if he
believed Iraq had chemical or biological weapons, President
Chirac
replied: “I
don’t know … we have no proof”, but that was the task for the
inspectors.
712.
Asked in
conclusion again why France hadn’t sent troops to exert pressure
on
Saddam
Hussein, President Chirac replied that the US on its own was
“exerting all the
pressure”;
the British were “just making an additional contribution”. He
wanted to “limit
the risks
of war as far as possible”. He was “not a pacifist”, but “simply
saying that war
is the
last resort when everything else has been done. And we are not in
that situation.”
713.
Mr Campbell
wrote that Mr Blair said: “It was clear now … that the French
did not
714.
Mr Campbell
also wrote that the briefing to the press on the aircraft on the
way
back from
the Azores made “clear that the French had to come back and say
whether
there were
any circumstances at all in which they might support military
action”.
245
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to
Iraq. Hutchinson,
2012.
525