5 |
Advice on the legal basis for military action, November 2002 to
March 2003
641.
Sir Jeremy
reported that he had stressed that the UK’s objective “was
the
disarmament
of Iraq by peaceful means if possible”. The “aim was to keep a
united
Security
Council at the centre of attempts to disarm Iraq”, but calls for a
“grace period for
Iraq” of 45
days or longer were “out of the question”. The UK would not amend
the draft
resolution
tabled on 7 March:
“… until it
was clear that the new concept had a chance of succeeding. If the
Council
was
interested, we might be able to move forward in the next day or so;
if not, we
would be
back on the 7 March text and my instructions were to take a vote
soon.”
642.
Sir Jeremy and
Mr Annan had also discussed press reporting of
Mr Annan’s
comments
(on 10 March), “to the effect that military action without a
Council
authorisation
would violate the UN Charter”. Mr Annan said that he had
been:
“…
misquoted: he had not been attempting an interpretation of 1441 but
merely
offering,
in answer to a specific question, obvious thoughts about the basic
structure
of the
Charter. Nevertheless the Council was seized of the Iraq problem
and working
actively on
it. It had not yet reached a decision to authorise force; how …
could it be
right for
some Member States to take the right to use force into their own
hands?”
643.
Sir Jeremy
reported that he had “remonstrated that the Council was in
paralysis:
at least
one Permanent Member had threatened to veto ‘in any
circumstances’.
The Council
was not shouldering its responsibilities.”
644.
Asked what the
UK would do if it failed to get even nine votes, Sir Jeremy
said:
“… we would
have to consider the next steps; but we believed we had a basis
for
the use of
force in existing resolutions (based on the revival of the 678
authorisation
by the
material breach finding in OP1 of 1441, coupled with Iraq’s
manifest failure to
take the
final opportunity offered to it in that resolution) … OP12 … did
not in terms
require
another decision. This was not an accidental oversight: it had been
the basis
of the
compromise that led to the adoption of the
resolution.”
645.
Sir Jeremy
reported that he had “urged” Mr Annan “to be cautious about
allowing
his name to
be associated too closely with one legal view of a complicated and
difficult
issue”.
646.
At
Mr Annan’s suggestion, Sir Jeremy subsequently gave the UN
Office of Legal
Affairs a
copy of Professor Greenwood’s memorandum to the FAC of October 2002
and
Mr Straw’s
evidence to the FAC on 4 March 2003.
647.
Mr Straw’s
evidence to the FAC is referred to in more detail in Section
3.7.
648.
Sir Jeremy
reported that Mr Annan had said “several times” that he
“understood”
what
Mr Straw and Mr Blair “were trying to do, and expressed
sympathy for the
tough
situation you found yourselves in”. Sir Jeremy reported that
Mr José Maria
Aznar, the
Spanish Prime Minister, was “in a similar predicament”. The “US did
not
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