9.3 |
July 2004 to May 2005
and
inclusiveness … There are at last serious numbers of trained and
equipped ISF
to deploy …
With UK help, a coherent national policing plan should soon be in
place
… Opinion
polls show most Iraqis determinedly optimistic about the
future.”
577.
Mr Chaplin saw
two key risks:
•
that the
constitutional process would be insufficiently inclusive, so that
the
debate
“instead of being an instrument for bringing Iraqis together, will
drive
them apart,
with moderate Sunnis retreating into the arms of the extremists”;
and
•
that the
Alliance would split into factions, with Muqtada al-Sadr deciding
that
he could
gain more influence by opposing the government: “Coping with
Shia
unrest in
the south as well as a Sunni insurgency in the centre and
north
remains the
nightmare scenario for any Baghdad government, and for the
MNF.”
578.
Mr Chaplin
considered that both risks needed to be taken seriously,
although
in his view
the second was unlikely to materialise unless Grand Ayatollah
al-Sistani
died.
Although there was an aspiration to agree a Constitution that would
be inclusive,
“the missing
bit is an inclusive constitutional process”.
579.
On 19 May, Mr
Blair commented to President Bush that the delay in forming
the
ITG had
created uncertainty over its effectiveness.320
580.
Reporting a
recent visit to Iraq to Cabinet on 19 May, Dr Reid observed that
the
inclusion
of Sunni Ministers in the ITG was encouraging, as was “their desire
to be
identified
as Iraqis rather than by their religious or ethnic
background”.321
581.
Less
comforting was the lack of Sunni participants in the Constitutional
Committee,
which
needed to be addressed if the process was to be
successful.
582.
Mr Blair
confirmed the strategic importance of Iraq to both regional
security and the
establishment
of democracy in the region. It was therefore essential to continue
the fight
against
terrorism and to defeat the “campaign of
destabilisation”.
583.
On 25 May, Dr
Reid told Parliament that after the forthcoming troop
rotation
there would
be approximately 8,500 UK military personnel in Iraq, an increase
of just
over
400.322
He
explained that:
“The reason
for this small increase is in order to allow greater effort to be
put into
the
training, development and mentoring of the Iraqi security forces:
this will enable
them to
take on ever greater responsibility for their own security and so
pave the
way for UK
troops to withdraw.”
320
Letter
Quarrey to Siddiq, 19 May 2005, ‘Prime Minister’s video-conference
with Bush, 19 May’.
321
Cabinet
Conclusions, 19 May 2005.
322
House of
Commons, Official
Report, 25 May
2005, column 15WS.
487