6.2 |
Military planning for the invasion, January to March
2003
success in
Phase III. Rapid success will set the conditions for Phase IV,
which in
turn will
determine the overall success of the enterprise.”
524.
On 6 March,
Mr Blair chaired the first Ministerial meeting convened
solely
to address
humanitarian and other post-conflict issues.
525.
Officials
recommended that the UK should not seek responsibility for
general
administration
of a geographical area of Iraq in the medium term and
pressed
Ministers
to take an urgent decision on the issue.
526.
No decision
was taken.
527.
After Cabinet
on 6 March, Mr Blair chaired a meeting on post-conflict
issues
with Mr
Brown, Mr Hoon, Ms Clare Short (International Development
Secretary),
Baroness
Symons (joint FCO/DTI Minister of State for International Trade
and
Investment),
Sir Michael Jay (FCO Permanent Under Secretary) and “other
officials”.173
528.
The annotated
agenda and the meeting are described in more detail in
Section 6.5.
529.
With the
invasion possibly only weeks away, the IPU explained that US and
UK
planning
assumed that, in the “medium term after the conflict”, Coalition
Forces would
be
“re-deployed into six or seven geographical sectors in order to
provide a secure
environment
for the civil transitional administration to conduct humanitarian
assistance
and
reconstruction work”. The US expected the UK Division in Iraq to be
responsible
for a
geographical sector, which would be very expensive and carry wider
resource
implications.
The UK Division would probably be based in or near Basra, with the
size
of its AOR
depending on a number of factors, including the permissiveness of
the
environment
and the size of the Division in relation to the rest of the
Coalition.
530.
The annotated
agenda stated:
“Ministers
need urgently to take a view on this before the military
planning
assumptions
become a fait accompli.”
531.
The questions
Ministers were asked included:
•
To choose
between options for a medium-term post-conflict military
presence.
The Chiefs
of Staff believed it would be necessary to reduce the UK’s
military
contribution
from about 45,000 to 15,000 in the “medium term (by the
autumn)”
to “avoid
long term damage to the Armed Forces”. At the same time, the
US
expected
the UK to contribute forces “for the security of a geographic area
…
over the
medium term”. The IPU considered it “reasonable to assume that
a
173
Letter
Cannon to Owen, 7 March 2003. ‘Iraq: Post-Conflict
Issues’.
467