1.1 | UK
Iraq strategy 1990 to 2000
56.
Sir Michael
Wood, FCO Legal Adviser from 1999 to 2006, told the Inquiry that
the
legal basis
on which the UK Government relied in establishing the
NFZs:
“… was
based upon an exceptional right to take action to avert an
overwhelming
humanitarian
catastrophe …
“The need
to avert an extreme humanitarian catastrophe … is regarded by
the
British
Government as being derived from customary international law, and
the
essence of
it, I think, is that if something like the Holocaust were happening
today, if
the
Security Council were blocked, you couldn’t get an authorisation
from it, then it
simply
cannot be the law that States cannot take action to intervene in
that kind of a
situation,
an emergency of that scale.”16
57.
Sir Michael
also referred to the answer given by Baroness Symons to Parliament
in
1998 in
relation to Kosovo, which set out the Government’s position on the
use of force
for
humanitarian purposes:
“There is
no general doctrine of humanitarian necessity in international law.
Cases
have
nevertheless arisen (as in northern Iraq in 1991) when, in the
light of all the
circumstances,
a limited use of force was justifiable in support of purposes
laid
down by the
Security Council but without the Council’s express authorisation
when
that was
the only means to avert an immediate and overwhelming
humanitarian
catastrophe.
Such cases would in the nature of things be exceptional and
would
depend on
an objective assessment of the factual circumstances at the
time
and on the
terms of relevant decisions of the Security Council bearing on
the
situation
in question.”17
58.
While
enforcing the NFZs, coalition aircraft also collected tactical
reconnaissance
information
to help monitor Saddam Hussein’s compliance with resolution
688.
59.
Op Provide
Comfort II formally ended on 31 December 1996. France
withdrew
from the
enforcement of the northern NFZ, announcing that the humanitarian
need had
subsided.
On 1 January 1997, Operation Northern Watch began, enforced by
UK and
US
aircraft.
60.
Following an
attack on 19 September 1996 on Iraqi air defence missile sites
north
of the 32nd
parallel which had targeted coalition aircraft, the US and the UK
moved the
boundary of
the southern NFZ north to the 33rd parallel. From that date, French
aircraft
participated
only in patrols up to the 32nd parallel. France withdrew its
support for the
operation
in the wake of Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998, although it
continued
to station
aircraft in Saudi Arabia.
61.
The zones,
covering around 60 percent of the land area of Iraq, continued to
exist
until March
2003.
16
Public
hearing, 24 November 2009, page 119.
17
House of
Lords, Official
Report,
16 November 1998, column WA140.
35