The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
555.
Mr Johnson set
out the MOD’s views in a letter to Mr Gray on 2
October.296
He recommended
that the FCO paper be clear about:
•
The
circumstances in which the UK might seek to establish democracy or
set up
“some kind
of authoritarian regime” in Iraq. The UK’s public position should
“not
raise
expectations that we may subsequently disappoint”.
•
How much of
Iraq’s bureaucracy was “either redeemable or necessary”.
In
the paper
the FCO argued against root-and-branch dismantling of a
system
permeated
by the Ba’ath Party, but also suggested that much of the
Party
would
collapse anyway. “The key issue is surely the extent to which the
existing
bureaucratic
structure will need to be retained (and no doubt re-educated)
in
order for
the country to be governable in practice.”
•
The
different options for an interim government. The paper needed to
distinguish
between the
situation following military action explicitly authorised by the
UN
and that
following what might be called “US unilateral action”. In the
latter
case, was
it still safe to assume the UN would take on the role of
supervising
reconstruction?
•
The locus
and role of other Permanent Members of the UN Security Council
and
neighbouring
states.
•
The
potential role of multilateral institutions and states in
reconstruction and
security
provision. For the UK, “a long-term commitment significantly over
and
above the
forces currently in theatre, particularly following on from a
war-fighting
campaign,
would have serious consequences for our ability to respond to
other
contingencies,
or even perhaps our ability to sustain current tasks”.
556.
Mr Johnson
commented that, although many of those questions might not be
easy
to answer
at that stage, they needed to be raised, as did the issue of
“whether and how
an
assumption about UK post-conflict involvement might feed back into
our decision-
making
about our contribution to conflict (if it comes to
that)”.
557.
Mr Johnson
added that the DoD had expressed an interest in the subject. Mr
Webb
was
planning to send a copy of the next version of the paper to Mr
Feith.
558.
Some of the
MOD’s suggestions were picked up in the next FCO paper, on
models
for
administering Iraq, described later in this
Section.297
559.
Sir
Christopher Meyer questioned whether the paper was right to
classify the
securing of
UK reconstruction contracts as a second order
objective.298
Russia
and
France
were, by all accounts, anxious about their economic interests in
Iraq after
Saddam
Hussein’s demise. UK interests were not something to press
immediately, but
296
Letter
Johnson to Gray, 2 October 2002, ‘Scenarios for the future of Iraq
after Saddam’.
297
Paper FCO,
[undated, version received at AHGI, 11 October 2002], ‘Models for
Administering a
Post‑Saddam
Iraq’.
298
Telegram
1256 Washington to FCO London, 1 October 2002, ‘Iraq: Dividing the
Spoils’.
206