Sunday 21 June 2009
A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and
Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq,
outlining their intention to go to war without a second United
Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official
inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.
The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before
the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men
became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative
scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising
military action.
Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan
"to fly U2 reconnaissance
aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover". Bush
said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi
leader in breach of UN resolutions.
The president expressed hopes that an Iraqi defector would be
"brought out" to give a public presentation on Saddam's WMD or that
someone might assassinate the Iraqi leader. However, Bush confirmed
even without a second resolution, the US was prepared for military
action. The memo said Blair told Bush he was "solidly with the
president".
The five-page document, written by Blair's foreign policy adviser, Sir David Manning, and
copied to Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK ambassador to the UN,
Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, the chief of the defence
staff, Admiral Lord Boyce, and the UK's ambassador to Washington,
Sir Christopher Meyer, outlines how Bush told Blair he had decided
on a start date for the war.
Paraphrasing Bush's comments at the meeting, Manning, noted:
"The start date for the
military campaign was now pencilled in for 10 March. This was when
the bombing would begin."
Last night an expert on international law who is familar with
the memo's contents said it provided vital evidence into the two
men's frames of mind as they considered the invasion and its
aftermath and must be presented to the Chilcott inquiry established
by Gordon Brown to examine the causes, conduct and consequences of
the Iraq war.
Philippe Sands, QC, a professor of law at University College
London who is expected to give evidence to the inquiry, said
confidential material such as the memo was of national importance,
making it vital that the inquiry is not held in private, as Brown
originally envisioned.
In today's Observer, Sands writes: "Documents like this raise
issues of national embarrassment, not national security. The
restoration of public confidence requires this new inquiry to be
transparent. Contentious matters should not be kept out of the
public domain, even in the run-up to an election."
The memo notes there had been a shift in the two men's thinking
on Iraq by late January 2003 and that preparing for war was now
their priority. "Our diplomatic strategy had
to be arranged around the military
planning," Manning writes. This was despite
the fact Blair that had yet to receive advice on the legality of
the war from the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, which did not
arrive until 7 March 2003 - 13 days before the bombing campaign
started.
In his article today, Sands says the memo raises questions about
the selection of the chair of the inquiry. Sir John Chilcott sat on
the 2004 Butler inquiry, which examined the reliability of
intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, and would have been
privy to the document's contents - and the doubts about WMD running
to the highest levels of the US and UK governments.
Many senior legal experts have expressed dismay that Chilcott
has been selected to chair the inquiry as he is considered to be
close to the security services after his time spent as a civil
servant in Northern Ireland.
Brown had believed that allowing the Chilcott inquiry to hold
private hearings would allow witnesses to be candid. But after
bereaved families and antiwar campaigners expressed outrage, the
prime minister wrote to Chilcott to say that if the panel can show
witnesses and national security issues will not be compromised by
public hearings, he will change his stance.
Lord Guthrie, a former chief
of the defence staff under Blair, described the memo as "quite
shocking". He said that it underscored why
the Chilcott inquiry must be seen to be a robust investigation:
"It's important that the inquiry is not a whitewash as these
inquiries often are."
This year, the Dutch government launched its own inquiry into
its support for the war. Significantly, the inquiry will see all
the intelligence shared with the Dutch intelligence services by MI5
and MI6. The inquiry intends to publish its report in November -
suggesting that confidential information about the role played by
the UK and the US could become public before Chilcott's inquiry
reports next year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/21/iraq