The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
394.
In his
‘Supplementary Memorandum’, Mr Straw wrote:
“In this
area of international law, recourse to the courts is not available.
This means
that
international law must be inherently less certain, and that, given
the seriousness
of the
issues, great care has to be taken in coming to a view. But the
absence of
an external
tribunal means that a view has in the end to be taken by the
Attorney
General, on
whose shoulders rests a great weight of
responsibility.”155
395.
Asked whether
there was a responsibility to be “all the more scrupulous in
adhering
to the law”
in circumstances where there was no court with jurisdiction to rule
on the use
of force in
Iraq, Mr Straw replied:
“Yes, of
course. You have to be extremely scrupulous because it is a
decision which
is made
internally without external determination … but that’s a very
separate point
from saying
that … the correct view is on one side rather than the other. The
correct
view was
the correct view.”156
396.
In a letter
of 6 February, Mr Straw took issue with a number of the
provisional
conclusions
in Lord Goldsmith’s draft advice of 14 January.
397.
Mr Straw
attached great importance to concessions made by France,
Russia
and China
(which he described as a defeat for them).
398.
But
Mr Straw dismissed concessions made by the UK and the US as
a
trade‑off
which merely offered other members of the Security Council
“some
procedural
comfort”.
399.
That
considerably understated the importance of the concessions by
all
members of
the P5 to create sufficient ambiguity about the meaning of
the
resolution
to command consensus in the Security Council.
400.
The UK had
explicitly recognised during the negotiation of
resolution
1441 that
the inclusion of a provision for the Security Council to “consider”
a
report
would create the opportunity for France and others to argue that a
further
decision
would be required to determine whether Iraq was in material breach
of
resolution
1441.
401.
In his
letter Mr Straw did not refer to Lord Goldsmith’s minute to
Mr Blair
of 30
January.
155
Statement,
February 2010, ‘Supplementary Memorandum by the Rt Hon Jack Straw
MP’.
156
Public
hearing, 8 February 2010, pages 26-27.
72