6.5 |
Planning and preparation for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, January to
March 2003
1265.
The IPU stated
that the task for Camp David was to build on five areas
where
there was
already agreement between the UK and US:
•
The
Coalition, through ORHA, would be responsible for the
administration of Iraq
for the
first few weeks.
•
The UN
should not be asked to run Iraq.
•
The
objective should be Security Council authorisation or endorsement
for an
international
presence that would include the UN.
•
Coalition,
not UN, troops would provide security on the ground.
•
As soon as
possible, Iraq should govern itself.
1266.
The
differences between the UK and US positions remained significant.
The IPU
explained
that the US approach amounted to:
“… asking
the UNSC to endorse Coalition military control over Iraq’s
transitional
administration,
its representative institutions and its revenues until such time as
a
fully-fledged
Iraqi government is ready to take over. It would marginalise the
role of
a UN
Special Co-ordinator. These ideas are a non-starter for the
Security Council,
would be
denounced by the Iraqis and the wider Arab/Islamic world, and would
not
provide the
stability needed to develop the new Iraq.”
1267.
The brief
stated that there was “still some distance to go if we are to agree
a way
forward to
avoid an inchoate start to Phase IV”.
1268.
The IPU set
out a number of “propositions” which it hoped Mr Blair and
President
Bush could
agree. Those propositions and the progress of the negotiations on
resolution
1483 are
addressed in Section 9.1.
1269.
Mr Straw
sent Mr Blair an FCO paper on Phase IV issues in advance of
Camp
David.532
Mr Straw
said that he hoped Mr Blair would counter any tendency by
President
Bush to
conclude that the UN had failed over Iraq:
“… the US
will need to go on working through the UN, both to authorise the
post-
conflict
work in Iraq so that a wide range of countries can join the
peacekeeping and
reconstruction
effort, and to provide an exit strategy for the US/UK and because
the
UN itself
and its agencies have important expertise to offer”.
1270.
The FCO paper
on Phase IV issues stated that, in addition to US agreement
on
a UN
resolution, the UK needed US agreement on a number of other
important political,
humanitarian
and economic issues, including:
•
A Baghdad
conference. The US was still thinking of a Coalition conference
with
the UN in a
supporting role. That was the wrong way round for
international
acceptability.
532
Minute
Straw to Blair, 25 March 2003, ‘Camp David: Post-Iraq
Policies’.
535