5 |
Advice on the legal basis for military action, November 2002 to
March 2003
(and the
Russians and Chinese) would no doubt be sitting comfortably among
the
abstainers …
“My feeling
… is that our interests are better served by not putting a draft to
a vote
unless we
were sure that it had sufficient votes to be adopted … But we
should
revisit
this issue later – a lot still had to be played out in the
Council.”
448.
Mr Blair
told Cabinet on 27 February that he would continue to push
for
a further
Security Council resolution.
449.
Mr Alastair
Campbell, Mr Blair’s Director of Communications between May
1997
and August
2003, wrote in his diaries that Mr Blair had had a meeting
with Mr Prescott,
the Deputy
Prime Minister, and Mr Straw, “at which we went over the
distinct possibility
of no
second resolution because the majority was not there for it”.
Mr Blair “knew that
meant real
problems, but he remained determined on this, and convinced it was
the right
450.
Mr Blair
told Cabinet that he would continue to push for a further Security
Council
resolution.180
He
described the debate in the UK and Parliament as
“open”:
“Feelings
were running high and the concerns expressed were genuine.
But
decisions
had to be made. The central arguments remained the threat posed
by
weapons of
mass destruction in the hands of Iraq; the brutal nature of the
Iraqi
regime; and
the importance of maintaining the authority of the UN in the
international
order.
Failure to achieve a further Security Council resolution would
reinforce the
hand of the
unilateralists in the American Administration.”
451.
When Lord
Goldsmith met No.10 officials on 27 February he advised
that
the safest
legal course would be to secure a further Security Council
resolution.
452.
Lord
Goldsmith told them, however, that he had reached the view that
a
“reasonable
case” could be made that resolution 1441 was capable of
reviving
the
authorisation to use force in resolution 678 (1990) without a
further resolution,
if there
were strong factual grounds for concluding that Iraq had failed to
take the
final
opportunity offered by resolution 1441.
453.
Lord
Goldsmith advised that, to avoid undermining the case for reliance
on
resolution
1441, it would be important to avoid giving any impression that the
UK
believed a
second resolution was legally required.
179
Campbell A
& Hagerty B. The
Alastair Campbell Diaries. Volume 4. The Burden of Power:
Countdown
to
Iraq. Hutchinson,
2012.
180
Cabinet
Conclusions, 27 February 2003.
81