Britain failed to establish ‘legitimacy’ of Iraq invasion/‘Tougher’ Blair could have shaped Iraq plan - PM committed to war prematurely, inquiry told

Britain failed to establish ‘legitimacy’ of Iraq invasion - Former ambassador to UN gives evidence
By Alex Barker
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: November 27 2009 13:23 | Last updated: November 27 2009 18:08
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/02be1d04-db58-11de-9023-00144feabdc0.html


The US and UK launched a war to topple Saddam Hussein in spite of failing to “establish the legitimacy” of the invasion, according to Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock on Friday told the Iraq inquiry that while there was sufficient “legal cover” for war to topple Saddam Hussein it was of “questionable legitimacy”.

“If you do something internationally that the majority of UN member states think is wrong, illegitimate or politically unjustifiable, you are taking a risk in my view,” he added.

The inquiry, in its fourth day of hearings, examined the UK’s diplomatic efforts at the UN in the run-up to war in 2003, which were led by Sir Jeremy.

The former UN ambassador revealed that in 2002 he privately threatened to resign if military action was taken against Iraq without securing “at least one” fresh UN resolution finding Iraq in material breach of its international obligations.

“If this was just going to be a Potemkin exercise of going through the UN I was not going to be part of it,” he told the inquiry. He added that this warning, conveyed to the Foreign Office permanent secretary, was a “stiffener for London”.

Sir Jeremy unsuccessful attempted to negotiate a second Security Council resolution, which was blocked by France and Russia among others, triggering an ongoing debate about the legality of the conflict.

Securing such an agreement was the “safest possible legal grounds” for military action, Sir Jeremy said. However he made clear that the UK’s private position was that military action was justifiable on the basis of previous resolutions.

Sir Jeremy complained that “gung-ho attitudes” in the US over the need for regime change were “unhelpful” to the UK’s objective of pushing for international action against Iraq on the basis of weapons of mass destruction.

But he argued that the effort Britain put in to securing this resolution in itself prevented “the collapse of the health of the international security” that would have resulted from unilateral US military action.

”We were trying to defend the United Nations from being eroded by successive non-compliance by a member state just as much as we were trying to deal with the threat posed by the Iraqi possession of dangerous weapons,” he said.

Sir Jeremy echoed the concerns over the tension between the diplomatic and military timetable expressed by Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s ambassador to the US, in earlier testimony.

Addressing the issue of whether weapons inspectors should have been given more time, Sir Jeremy told the inquiry: “It seemed to me that the option of invading Iraq in, say, October 2003 deserved much greater consideration. But the momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter.”

By March 2003 – days before the outbreak of war – he “did not feel ... that I could represent within the security council that the inspectors had had enough time.” He argued a “smoking gun” was essential to winning round sceptics.

Had they been given the summer to continue their work, Sir Jeremy thought there was a chance that war may have been averted. But he still put the chances of war in the autumn of 2003 as “more than 50 per cent”.

In his written testimony, Sir Jeremy said the two most important facts in the “saga” at the UN were the “absence of irrefutable evidence” on WMD and “the determination of the United States to proceed with military action whatever the state of the evidence produced at the UN”.












‘Tougher’ Blair could have shaped Iraq plan - PM committed to war prematurely, inquiry told
By Alex Barker, Political Correspondent
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: November 26 2009 23:14 | Last updated: November 26 2009 23:14
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fe60eca2-dac9-11de-933d-00144feabdc0.html


Tony Blair relinquished Britain’s diplomatic influence over the US by prematurely supporting moves to invade Iraq without pressing for an improvement in military plans for the war or occupation, an inquiry heard on Thursday.

The UK ambassador to Washington from 1997 to 2003 told the Iraq inquiry that Mr Blair, then prime minister, may have “signed in blood” his support for toppling Saddam Hussein as early as April 2002 at a critical summit with President George W. Bush.

Sir Christopher Meyer argued that Mr Blair could have “achieved more” had he played “a tougher role” and attached conditions to Britain’s support, such as better postwar preparations and a push for Middle East peace.

This approach would have “changed the nature of American planning”, Sir Christopher said, without leading to a “rupture” in transatlantic relations. He said he reported back to London that they were being “taken for granted”.

Sir Christopher denied that Mr Blair’s support for the war was “poodle-ish”, saying the former prime minister was a “true believer in the wickedness of Saddam Hussein”.

But he compared his handling of US relations unfavourably with Lady Thatcher. “What would Margaret Thatcher have done?” he said. “I take her name in vain – I may be hit with a thunderbolt – but I think she would have insisted on a clear, coherent diplomatic strategy, and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck happened if and when we remove Saddam.”

Sir Christopher pointed to Mr Blair’s private meeting with Mr Bush at his Crawford ranch in Spring 2002 as a turning point on the road to war. He said: “The two men were alone in the ranch so . . . I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch.”

He added that there were “clues” in Mr Blair’s speech the next day, in which he mentioned regime change for perhaps the first time. “When I heard that speech, I thought that this represents a tightening of the UK-US alliance and a degree of convergence on the danger that Saddam Hussein presented,” he said.

Within days of the summit with Mr Bush, Sir David Manning, then Mr Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser, gave Sir Christopher “new instructions”, indicating that it was a “complete waste of time” to oppose regime change.

Sir David said it was more important to focus on building an international coalition through the United Nations.

Recalling a discussion with a US official, Sir Christopher added: “I didn’t say just, ‘we are with you on regime change, now let’s go get the bastard’. We didn’t do that.

“What we said was, ‘let’s do it cleverly and let’s do it with some skill’. That means, apart from anything else, go to the UN.”

The former ambassador said the “real problem” was that an “unforgiving” military timetable was set before UN weapons inspectors, led by Hans Blix, went into Iraq.

“It was impossible to see how Blix could bring the inspection process to a conclusion,” he said. “You had to short-circuit the process by finding the notorious ‘smoking gun’.

“The key problem was to have let the military strategy wag the political and diplomatic strategy. It should have been the other way round,” he added.