The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
79.
The SPG’s key
judgements included:
“The UK
main effort should be our AO in southern Iraq. It is here we can
have the
most direct
effect and achieve the exemplary effect HMG seeks.
“We must
also assist in developing the wider Iraqi strategy through the CPA
…
in order to
adequately support our efforts in the South and to ensure they
remain
coherent
with developments across Iraq. Our military engagement in the South
gives
us the
equity in decision-making to enable this.”
80.
The SPG
recommended increasing civilian support from the UK to help
strengthen
CPA(South),
emphasising that:
“This
should be a cross-Government
effort. Currently
the UK military is de facto
in the lead
in Southern Iraq, largely for reasons of simple capacity. We should
seek
to change
this. Firstly the military is reaching the limit of its capacity to
engage in
reconstruction
… Secondly, but more importantly, it is crucial to transition
away
from
quasi-military government to civil administration, to free military
capacity for its
primary
task of providing security, to avoid the impression of a military
Occupation
and to
hasten the eventual move to Iraqi self-government.”
81.
The paper also
raised the possible deployment of NATO’s Allied Rapid
Reaction
Corps (ARRC
– see Box, ‘The Allied Rapid Reaction Corps’ in Section 9.1) to
Iraq,
noting that
it was:
“… still a
candidate in US minds for a future CJTF-7 [Combined Joint
Task
Force 7]
but the acceptability of its use remains unresolved. At the
operational
level US
commanders clearly still see it as a replacement for V Corps
…”
82.
The SPG
observed that the CPA and CJTF-7 were not directly
linked:
“This
effectively establishes two power bases answering independently to
Rumsfeld.
The UK
should, therefore, keep a foot firmly in each camp, and consider
the
potential
role of HQ-ARRC as a future CJTF-7.”
83.
On 9 June, Ms
Cathy Adams, Legal Counsellor to Lord Goldsmith, sent a reply to
a
letter of
21 May from FCO Legal Advisers seeking advice on resolution
1483.32
84.
Ms Adams
explained that FCO Legal Advisers had suggested that the
resolution
amounted to
a mandate to the Iraqi people to establish a representative
government
which
limited their choices in determining their political future. Lord
Goldsmith had
concluded
that this argument went too far.
32
Letter
Adams to Llewellyn, 9 June 2003, ‘Iraq: Effect of Security Council
Resolution 1483 on the
Authority
of the Occupying Powers’.
220