The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
645.
Mr Sawers
judged that:
“We are
ending the year in better shape on Iraq than looked likely during
much of
the autumn.
But we continue to face formidable problems inside Iraq if we are
to
maintain
stability and deliver a handover of power to a Transitional
Government
in June
2004.”
646.
Mr Sawers
described increasing engagement on Iraq within the EU, and from
the
UN. On
security, he wrote:
“… the
critical aspect to get right is to ensure that Iraqiisation moves
ahead in step
with Iraqi
capability and the prevailing security conditions. We must not fall
into the
trap of
equating numbers with capability.”
647.
Short-term
issues to be tackled included “the fuel crisis” through the Iraqi
winter
and
drafting the TAL by the end of February 2004, but
also:
“We will
also have to find a solution to the problem of the Governing
Council’s
determination
that they should continue to exist in some form after 30
June.”
648.
At the end of
December, Sir Jeremy Greenstock reported that he had spent
the
holiday
period in bilateral discussions with key GC
members.359
649.
Discussions
had clarified the difficulties faced by the GC in drafting the TAL.
The
main
obstacles were: the mechanism for choosing the Transitional
National Assembly,
and Grand
Ayatollah al-Sistani’s demands for elections; Kurdish efforts “to
push for what
amounts to
secession”; and the future of the GC post-transition.
650.
Sir Nigel
Sheinwald told the Inquiry that the UK was in favour of sticking to
the
timetable
set out on 15 November throughout the political process, despite “a
lot of
debate
about whether things should be postponed or not because of
security”.360
651.
In his New
Year telegram to the FCO, Sir Jeremy Greenstock wrote that
the
Coalition
faced a significant challenge in the first six months of 2004 as
they prepared to
652.
The first of
the “hurdles in front of us” was that:
“The
violent opposition have capacity, people and materials in
ineradicable
quantities
for this timescale, even if their strategic reach is
limited.”
359
Telegram
333 IraqRep to FCO London, 29 December 2003, ‘Iraq: Political
Developments’.
360
Public
hearing, 16 December 2009, pages 34-35.
361
Telegram
337 IraqRep to FCO London, 1 January 2004, ‘Iraq: Six Final Months
of Occupation’.
314