6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
115.
Mr Chilcott
visited Paris on 29 January to update the French Government on
UK
thinking on
post-conflict issues. His visit was the latest in a series of
contacts between
FCO
officials and their French counterparts at which post-conflict
issues had been
discussed.
116.
Mr Giles
Paxman, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy Paris,
had
discussed
UK thinking on post-Saddam Hussein Iraq with two senior French
officials on
16 October
2002.60
One
official was reported to have commented that he:
“… feared
that the removal of Saddam would lead to general anarchy in Iraq
with
attacks on
Ba’ath Party symbols, settling of accounts and widespread
violence
as in
Albania. It might need a relatively authoritarian regime to
re-establish order.
We should
not rule out the possibility that this might be done by the Ba’ath
Party
organisation.”
117.
In December,
Mr Simon Fraser, FCO Director for Strategy and Innovation,
reported
that a
French interlocutor had:
“… argued
that we needed to think carefully about the potential for
political
disintegration
in Iraq after a war. There could be many unforeseen
consequences
including
political instability motivated by revenge. We should not let the
optimistic
scenarios
blind us to the potential problems. The same went for the wider
regional
118.
The purpose of
Mr Chilcott’s visit on 29 January was to be “as transparent
as
possible”
to “prepare the ground in case we had to move quickly on the day
after, not
least so
that the EU should be engaged at that point”.62
Mr Chilcott
reported that he
was struck
by how far UK and French views converged. The officials he had
seen
were
confident France would want to play “a proactive role” in any
aftermath, even if
they did
not participate in the military operation, but they would not want
to “dive into
a quagmire”.
119.
Draft UK
military campaign objectives were circulated to the FCO, MOD
and
DFID in
late January.
120.
Mr Desmond
Bowen, Deputy Head of OD Sec, reported to Sir David
Manning
that
Ministers were “generally content” with the draft, but that there
needed to be
a lot of
work on the objectives covering the period between the end of
hostilities
and the
establishment of a new Iraqi government.
60
Letter
Paxman to Fraser, 18 October 2002, ‘Scenarios for the future of
Iraq after Saddam’.
61
Minute
Fraser to Ricketts, 23 December 2002, ‘Planning talks: Paris: 20
December’.
62
Minute
Chilcott to Chaplin, 30 January 2003, ‘Day After Talks with the
French’.
331