6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
DFID would
not usually deploy its own people, but would work through the UN or
NGOs.
She asked
officials to revert to her before putting anyone through
training.
906.
On 3 December,
Dr Brewer met Major General Tim Cross, Logistic
Component
Commander
of the Joint Force being prepared for possible operations against
Iraq, to
discuss the
potential for better MOD/DFID engagement in Iraq and elsewhere
with.438
Dr Brewer
and Maj Gen Cross were joined later in the meeting by Mr
Chakrabarti.
907.
The record
stated that Maj Gen Cross emphasised the non-official nature of
his
visit and
requested that the meeting be conducted under Chatham House
rules.439
He was
concerned that “the MOD was failing to engage at an early stage
with other
government
departments particularly DFID and hence not paying sufficient heed
in its
planning to
wider security and humanitarian issues”. A number of action points
were
agreed to
promote “immediate and sustainable” links between DFID and MOD,
none
specifically
linked to Iraq.
908.
Dr Brewer
wrote to Mr Fernie on 5 December to express her concern about
DFID’s
engagement
with the rest of Whitehall:
“I’m
surprised that all of the Cabinet Office meetings so far seem to be
at [relatively
junior]
Head of Department level: Peter Ricketts tells me that he is
spending
50 percent
of his time on Iraq … are there Whitehall senior officials’
meetings to
which we
are not being invited? We should be proactive about this
…”440
909.
Sir Suma
Chakrabarti explained to the Inquiry that Maj Gen Cross left the
meeting
on 3
December:
“… agreeing
a number of ways to try and resolve this. In fact, he even asked
for
Clare Short
to write to the Defence Secretary, which I thought was interesting,
to try
and open up
the military planning side.
“On 12
December, Clare [Short] decided … in the margins of Cabinet, to
talk to
the Prime
Minister about this [military planning] and the Prime Minister
suggested
that she
have a direct conversation with the Chief of Defence Staff, Lord
Boyce,
as he now
is. And she did so, and Lord Boyce suggested that she or DFID
officials
talked to
some other people in his office about this. She didn’t seem to be
making
much
progress. I took it up with the Cabinet Secretary. David Manning
very kindly
also rang
the Chief of Defence Staff about it, and on 18 December MOD
officials
came across
and we agreed a way forward whereby we could link up better
the
humanitarian
assistance and the operational planning on the military
side.”441
438
Minute DFID
[junior official] to Brewer, 3 December 2002, ‘Meeting with Major
General Tim Cross –
3 December
2002’.
439
The Chatham
House Rule states that participants at a meeting in which it is
invoked are “free to use
the
information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation
of the speaker(s) nor that of any other
participant,
may be revealed”.
440
Minute
Brewer to Fernie, 5 December 2002, ‘Iraq: Contingency
Planning’.
441
Public
hearing, 8 December 2009, page 19.
265