10.3 |
Reconstruction: oil, commercial interests, debt relief, asylum and
stabilisation policy
13.
Sections 3.1
and 3.2 describe how, following the attacks on the US by Al Qaida
on
11
September 2001, the US moved away from pursuing a policy of
containment and
towards a
policy of taking direct action against Iraq, and the UK’s response
to that shift.
14.
In February
2002, No.10 commissioned a “large number of papers”
for the
meeting
between
President Bush and Mr Blair at Crawford, Texas, which was
scheduled to be
15.
Those papers
included:
“•
Iraq
… the
options, the state of play on the UN Resolutions, the legal base
and
the
internal dimension – the state of the opposition groups
etc.
…
•
Oil
and energy … who are
the producers, which states are Europe and the US
most
dependent on, the state of play in developing countries with oil
reserves,
16.
The Cabinet
Office’s ‘Iraq: Options Paper’, which is described in detail
in
Section 3.2,
identified two broad policy options:
•
toughen the
existing containment policy, or
17.
The paper
defined the current objectives of UK policy towards Iraq, and set
them
within the
context of the broader UK objectives of “preserving peace and
stability in the
Gulf and
ensuring energy security”.
18.
Apart from
that reference to energy security, the paper did not consider oil
or energy
security.
19.
The FCO’s
Forward Strategy Unit (FSU) produced a paper on the security of
global
oil supply
which considered a number of risks to the supply of oil, including
a “sustained
Allied
attack on Iraq”.9
The paper
concluded:
“•
Any step
increase in price likely to be unsustainable.
•
Sufficient
production and substantial spare capacity in other oil
producing
countries
to meet demand.”
20.
The Options
Paper and the FSU paper were submitted to Mr Blair on 8 March
2002
alongside
seven other “background briefs that you asked for”, for the meeting
with
6
Public
hearing, 19 January 2011, page 34.
7
Minute
McKane to Manning, 19 February 2002, ‘Papers for the Prime
Minister’.
8
Paper
Cabinet Office, 8 March 2002, ‘Iraq: Options Paper’.
9
Paper FSU,
March 2002, ‘Paper on Security of Supply of Oil’.
10
Minute
Manning to Prime Minister, 8 March 2002, ‘Briefing for the
US’.
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