6.4 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, mid-2001
to January 2003
resist to
the end or to abscond. For those reasons, the US was cautious about
the idea.
The FCO
intended to stay in touch with the State Department as thinking on
transitional
justice
developed.
945.
The FCO
advised that prosecution of the range of allegations against
Saddam
Hussein’s
regime might require a combination of different judicial
institutions. Issues to
consider
included:
•
the
capacity of the domestic criminal justice system, which was likely
to need
“substantial
re-building and re-training to restore it as an independent
and
effective
body”;
•
the
difficulty of finding a legal basis for a number of the options if
the UN was not
involved in
the administration of Iraq;
•
the UK’s
wish not to be associated with the death penalty, which
remained
extant in
Iraqi law; and
•
categorisation
of offenders, which might include:
{{political and
military leaders;
{{others
contributing to the commission of international
crimes;
{{perpetrators
of serious domestic crimes such as murder; and
{{those
responsible for lesser offences.
946.
Those issues
were considered further by officials after the second round
of
inter-agency
talks in Washington on 22 January 2003 (see Section
6.5).
947.
In a series
of papers on post-conflict Iraq prepared in mid-December
and
shared with
the US, the FCO identified:
•
possible
middle ground between UK and US positions on the
post-conflict
role of the
UN;
•
the need
for more information on the capabilities of Iraq’s civil
service;
•
the need to
put SSR at the centre of post-conflict work;
•
the risk of
underplaying the importance of “Islamic forces in
Iraq”;
•
the need to
improve economic conditions as quickly as possible;
and
•
the
importance of maintaining firm control of the internal
security
situation.
948.
The British
Embassy Amman also highlighted the tainted image of the UN
in
Iraq. It
stated that a UN-led interim administration would be preferable to
a US-led
one, but
would come in for much the same criticism from Iraqis.
949.
On 12
December, the FCO handed four papers to Ambassador Zalmay
Khalilzad,
US
Ambassador at large for Free Iraqis, who was visiting London for
the conference of
the Iraqi
Opposition from 14 to 17 December:
271