5 |
Advice on the legal basis for military action, November 2002 to
March 2003
491.
Asked by
Mr Andrew Mackinley (Labour) how there was going to be
“proper
conscious
decision-making” about whether Iraq was complying, Mr Straw
replied:
“… we make
our judgement on the basis of the best evidence. I have to say
it
was on the
basis of the best evidence that the international community made
its
judgement
on 8 November. They had hundreds of pages of reports
…”200
492.
In his advice
“on the end game options”, Sir Jeremy Greenstock stated that
there
was little
chance of bridging the gap with the French – “senior politicians
were dug in
too deep”;
and that a French veto appeared “more of a danger than failure to
get nine
493.
Sir Jeremy
identified the options as:
•
“stay firm
… and go with the US military campaign in the second half of
March
with the
best arguments we can muster if a second resolution … is
unobtainable,
we fall
back on 1441 and regret that the UN was not up to it
…”;
•
“make some
small concessions that might just be enough to get, e.g.
Chile
and Mexico
on board”. The “most obvious step” might be “ultimatum
language”
making
military action the default if the Council did not agree that Iraq
had come
into
compliance with resolution 1441;
•
“try
something on benchmarks, probably building on Blix’s cluster
document”.
That “would
be better done outside the draft resolution” to “avoid diluting
1441
(and avoid
placing too much weight on Blix’s shoulders)”; and
•
“putting
forward a second resolution not authorising force”, although it was
clear
that Sir
Jeremy envisaged there would be an “eventual use of
force”.
494.
Sir Jeremy
commented: “In the end, it may be best just to forge ahead on
present
lines.”
495.
Mr Ricketts
told Mr Straw that he and Sir David Manning had
discussed
Sir Jeremy’s
advice and believed that the “best package” might
comprise:
•
adding a
deadline to the draft resolution requiring “a bit more time”. A
US
suggestion
“that Iraq should have ‘unconditionally disarmed’ in ten days”
would
be “seen as
unreasonable”;
•
a small
number of carefully chosen benchmarks “set out separately from
the
resolution,
ideally by the Chileans and Mexicans … We could then use
the
clusters
document to illustrate how little compliance there had been
across
the board”;
and
200
Minutes, 4
March 2003, Foreign Affairs Committee (House of Commons), [Evidence
Session], Q 166.
201
Telegram
339 UKMIS New York to FCO London, 4 March 2003, ‘Personal Iraq: End
Game Options’.
89