The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
On 14 May,
officials advised members of the AHMGIR that:
“The US
administration has appointed Paul Bremer as special representative,
to bring
order to
ORHA and improve co-ordination with the US political track led by
Khalilzad.
John Sawers
is working closely with Bremer. General Cross continues to work
with
Garner, who
is unlikely to stay long.”173
Secretary
Powell told Mr Straw that the papers which meant “Bremer was now
CPA” were
signed by
Secretary Rumsfeld on 14 May.174
The names
‘ORHA’ and ‘CPA’ continued to be used interchangeably in documents
seen
by the
Inquiry for some time after Ambassador Bremer’s
appointment.
284.
Mr Sawers’
appointment as the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on
Iraq
was
announced to Parliament on 6 May by Mr Straw, who said
that:
“Mr Sawers
will work alongside Chris Segar, head of the newly opened British
Office
in Baghdad,
particularly in relation to the political process and our work in
the Office
of
Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.”175
285.
Mr Sawers
arrived in Baghdad on 7 May.176
The deployment
of Mr Segar and his
team is
described in Section 15.1.
286.
Sir John
Sawers told the Inquiry that, although he was “the senior Brit on
the
ground” he
was not Ambassador Bremer’s deputy nor was he in the line
management
chain of
the CPA. Rather, he was a representative of the British Government
and so his
role was
one of “exerting influence rather than exercising
power”.177
The UK
was not
contributing
very much to ORHA when he arrived, having just a handful of
advisers,
and was
not providing funding, all of which was coming from the
US.
287.
Sir John told
the Inquiry:
“I felt I
was in a reasonably strong position to exercise influence. There
were a range
of areas
where I was able to exercise influence in those months, but I
didn’t seek
and I
wasn’t given a veto or decision-making power on CPA issues; those
decisions
rested with
Bremer, he was the one who had the authority from the President of
the
United
States, which was the leader of the Coalition.”
288.
Mr Straw told
Secretary Powell that he saw Mr Sawers’ role as “similar to
Zal
Khalilzad”:
the UK thought it essential to have “someone handling the politics
and also
keeping an
eye on ORHA, on the ground”.178
Mr Straw
passed on the observations about
ORHA made
by Mr O’Brien, and Secretary Powell offered a similar
assessment.
173 Annotated
Agenda, 14 May 2003, Ad Hoc Group on Iraq Rehabilitation
meeting.
174
Letter
McDonald to Manning, 16 May 2003, ‘Foreign Secretary’s Conversation
with Colin Powell,
15
May’.
175
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 6 May
2003, column 515.
176
Telegram 2
IraqRep to FCO London, 11 May 2003, ‘Personal: Iraq: What’s going
wrong?’
177
Public
hearing, 10 December 2009, pages 56-58.
178
Letter
Straw to Manning, 6 May 2003, ‘Powell Calls 4 and 5 May
2003’.
180