9.1 |
March to 22 May 2003
45.
Mr Llewellyn
sent Lord Goldsmith’s advice to Mr Chilcott on 27
March.21
46.
Mr Blair and
Mr Straw met President Bush, Mr Colin Powell (US Secretary of
State)
and Dr Rice
at Camp David from 26 to 27 March.
47.
In his
published diaries Mr Alastair Campbell, No.10 Director of Strategy
and
Communications,
recorded that Mr Blair worked on “on a long note for Bush”
during
the flight
to the US.22
Mr Campbell
considered that:
“The main
message in TB’s note, when you boiled it down, was that there
was
a lot of
support for the aims of the campaign, and we totally believed the
policy
was right,
but there was real concern at the way the US put over their views
and
intentions
and that rested in people’s fears about their perceived
unilateralism.
He was
urging him to do more to rebuild with Germany, then Russia, then
France,
and saying
he should seize the moment for a new global agenda, one to unite
the
world
rather than divide it.”
48.
Mr Blair’s
Note to President Bush, which covered a broad range of issues,
began:
“This is
the moment when you can define international priorities for the
next
generation:
the true post-cold war world order. Our ambition is big: to
construct a
global
agenda around which we can unite the world rather than dividing it
into rival
49.
Mr Blair went
on to define “our fundamental goal” as:
“… to
spread our values of freedom, democracy, tolerance and the rule of
law, but
we need a
broad based agenda capable of unifying the world to get it. That’s
why,
though
Iraq’s WMD is the immediate justification for action, ridding Iraq
of Saddam
is the
real prize.”
50.
In Mr Blair’s
view “a ludicrous and distorted view of the US is clouding the
enormous
attraction
of the fundamental goal”, for which the solution was to “keep the
policy;
broaden the
agenda and change the presentation”.
51.
At dinner on
the first evening at Camp David, Mr Blair told President Bush
that
he did not
want his visit to focus primarily on a UN resolution to deal with
post-conflict
Iraq.24
The
question about what sort of resolution was needed for the
administration and
reconstruction
of Iraq should be parked. Mr Blair said that:
“The time
to debate this would come when we had secured victory, and were in
a
position of
strength.”
21
Minute
Llewellyn to Chilcott, 27 March 2003, ‘Iraq: Attorney General’s
Advice: Authorisation for
an Interim
Administration’.
22
Campbell A
& Stott R. The Blair
Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries.
Hutchinson, 2007.
23
Note [Blair
to Bush], [26 March 2003], ‘Note: The Fundamental
Goal’.
24
Letter
Manning to McDonald, 28 March 2003, ‘Prime Minister’s Meeting with
President Bush at Camp
David:
Dinner on 26 March’.
139