10.3 |
Reconstruction: oil, commercial interests, debt relief, asylum and
stabilisation policy
community
(separate from the broader political process underlying the need
for
intervention)
and best practice.
•
Executive:
implementing and managing the UK’s contribution to
post-conflict
reconstruction,
including the identification and training of civilian personnel
and
the
maintenance of databases, with deployable capability.”
909.
Four options
were proposed:
•
a small
non-permanent secretariat with a co-ordinating
function;
•
a small
permanent unit of 15-18 people to inform strategy and devise
operational
plans;
•
a unit of
40-50, with a component able to deploy alongside armed forces
(the
recommended
option); and
•
a large,
permanent department of 150-200 of whom about half could
be
deployed.
910.
DOP agreed the
proposed remit and to a scale somewhere between options
two
and
three.574
DOP did not
envisage that the unit itself should have a deployable
capacity.
911.
Officials sent
a second paper, setting out detailed structures and already
agreed
by Mr Straw,
Mr Benn and Mr Hoon, to DOP on 23 July.575
912.
The paper
proposed that:
“The PCRU
will bring together financial, analytical, planning and
personnel
resources
that in the past have been distributed across government. This will
enable
HMG
to:
•
Integrate
planning for the
military and civilian components of any
intervention …
Advance planning for post-conflict reconstruction
should
influence
military planning … and force composition …
•
Co-ordinate
with the international community and burden-share …
•
Identify
resources in advance … Honeymoon
periods in PCR situations
are short.
Failing to deliver a rapid and demonstrable improvement in
the
quality of
life to the local population can have a negative impact
…”
913.
The paper
proposed that DFID would host the PCRU and meet administrative
and
running
costs to the end of financial year 2007/08.
574
Letter
Fergusson to Drew, 19 February 2004, ‘Post-Conflict Reconstruction:
Follow Up to DOP’.
575
Paper
[Cabinet Office], 20 July 2004, ‘DOP paper on the Post Conflict
Reconstruction Unit’.
509