8 | The
invasion
orders in
relation to the port of Umm Qasr, including the application of US
labour and
customs
laws, for which there was no clear legal authority. The position of
UK forces,
if asked
to participate in related activities, was therefore
uncertain.
578.
Mr Llewellyn
concluded:
“If it
cannot be sorted out, we may well need a decision from Ministers
about
whether UK
forces should decline to take part in actions that we
consider
unauthorised
or unlawful.”
579.
The IPU sent
recommendations on the UK’s future engagement with ORHA
to
580.
The IPU
advised that the UK objective of an Interim Iraqi Administration
(IIA) acting
under UN
authorisation was unlikely to be in place sooner than 90 days after
the end of
hostilities.346
Until then,
mechanisms were needed to deliver humanitarian
assistance
and, within
the relevant legal constraints, civil administration. Without such
mechanisms,
those tasks
would fall on the military, which had other priorities and limited
resources.
581.
Because ORHA
would administer the whole of Iraq as part of an integrated
US-led
approach
and had large resources at its disposal, it would not be viable for
1 (UK) Div to
operate
“autonomously” in its AOR:
“We may
wish to support 1 Div’s capacity to carry out specific actions (eg
repairing
the water
supply) in areas where we are responsible for maintaining
security.
But the
logic of ORHA – a nation-wide approach to Phase IV – limits the
UK’s
responsibilities
and exposure. Carving out a separate approach in a UK sector
would
make no
sense.”
582.
Depending on
the circumstances, the UK could quite quickly be faced with “a
grey
area of
possible activities which could move ORHA beyond the UK’s
understanding of an
Occupying
Power’s rights and obligations”.
583.
The IPU
concluded that, while ORHA was “in many ways a
sub-optimal
organisation
for delivering the UK’s Phase IV objectives”, it was “the only game
in town”.
584.
Section 9.1
addresses UK concerns about the legality of ORHA activities in
Iraq
in greater
detail.
585.
The debate
about the scale of the UK contribution to ORHA is addressed
in
Section
10.1.
345
Minute IPU
to Private Secretary [FCO], 1 April 2003, ‘Iraq:
ORHA’.
346
Paper IPU,
28 March 2003, ‘Iraq: Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian
Assistance (ORHA)’.
103