The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
1329.
Asked by the
Inquiry whether the FCO had been slow to recognise the
inevitability
of conflict
and whether, as a result, it had been too late to make full
preparations for
what was
going to happen, Lord Jay responded:
“I think
there are two points there … There is, was it our judgment that,
whatever
happened,
the Americans were likely to go to war in Iraq and, secondly, if
they did,
was it
inevitable that we should join them?
“On the
first point … I would not put it as inevitable. I think I would say
it was …
certainly
towards the end of 2002 quite difficult to see the scenario in
which the
Americans
would conclude that they would not try to seek Saddam Hussein by
force.
I don’t
think it was inevitable. It was always possible that Saddam Hussein
could
go …
That would clearly have been preferable.
“I would
never say that conflict was inevitable. I would say that, from the
end of
2002
onwards, it was probable. There was a separate question as to
whether Britain
would take
part in that. When one looks back on it now, with all that has been
said
since then,
the inevitability of Britain taking part seems much greater than it
did at
the time.
It did not seem clear at the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003
… it did
not seem
clear to us in the Foreign Office, that a British participation in
the conflict
was
inevitable. There was an option not to take part in
it.”565
1330.
Lord Jay
suggested that it was “an extremely difficult thing to do in the
minds of
the same
people, to try to prevent something happening and to prepare for
that failure
and I don’t
think we had the structures available to us to do
that”.
1331.
Sir Peter
Ricketts told the Inquiry:
“All along,
right through to the eve of the second resolution, I thought it was
possible,
perhaps not
likely, but possible, that Saddam Hussein would choose, rather
than
face
overwhelming military force, to co-operate and comply. So it was
never for sure
that the UK
would be part of military operations or even really that military
operations
were
inevitable. I always thought there was another
option.”566
1332.
On the role of
the UN, Sir Peter stated:
“In Kosovo,
we had had a UN-led transitional administration, building on
existing
structures
there. In Afghanistan, we had had a very strong UN presence led
by
Mr Brahimi,567
supporting
a Loya Jirga, and then a domestic process, and so we
approached
it in the same frame of mind, that the UN had real experience in
dealing
565
Public
hearing, 30 June 2010, pages 69-71.
566
Public
hearing, 1 December 2009, page 25.
567
Mr Lakhdar
Brahimi, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for
Afghanistan from 2001 to
2004 and
Chairman of the Bonn Conference.
546