The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
that
outcome since he believed it would make it harder for the UN to
move forward after
the
conflict”.
781.
Mr Blair
told Mrs Beckett that Lord Goldsmith would make it clear that
“existing UN
resolutions
provided a legal base for military action”, in Cabinet, “which
would probably
be on
Monday afternoon”.
782.
The FCO
finalised a paper providing examples of Iraq’s failure to comply
with
the
obligations in resolution 1441 on 15 March.
783.
The FCO paper,
produced by officials in the FCO but drawn largely from
official
reports and
statements by UN inspectors, examined the extent of Iraq’s
non‑compliance
with the
obligations placed upon it by the United Nations Security Council
in
784.
In a note of a
conversation on 14 March with Ms Kara Owen, an official
in
Mr Straw’s
Private Office, Mr Brummell recorded that he had made the
following points
on Lord
Goldsmith’s behalf regarding the FCO paper being
prepared:
•
“Demonstration
of breaches of UNSCR 1441 are critical to our legal
case.
Therefore
we must be scrupulously careful to ensure that the best
examples
of non‑compliance
are referred to.”
•
“It would
be distinctly unhelpful to our legal case if the examples
of
non‑compliance
… were weak or inadequate; and it would be difficult –
indeed
it would
be too late – to seek to add further (better) examples ‘after the
event’.”
•
The FCO
needed to check the document they were preparing “very
carefully”
and subject
it to “the tightest scrutiny”.
•
The
document should include “a caveat … acknowledging that the
examples
of non-compliance
… were not exhaustive but illustrative”.
•
The
submission to Mr Straw should reflect those
points.335
785.
Mr Brummell’s
record of his conversation with Ms Owen on 14 March
also
stated that
he had been informed that the FCO paper would be sent out with a
letter
from
Mr Blair to Ministerial colleagues on 17 March, “after
Cabinet”. Mr Blair’s letter
would also
contain a “one page” summary of the legal position, which was
“news” to
Mr Brummell.
A subsequent conversation with Mr Rycroft had “confirmed that
it would
be helpful
if” Lord Goldsmith’s staff would draft that summary.
334
Paper FCO,
15 March 2003, ‘Iraqi Non-Compliance with UNSCR 1441’.
335
Minute
Brummell, 14 March 2003, ‘Iraqi Non-Compliance with UNSCR 1441:
Note of Telephone
Conversation
with Kara Owen’.
140