A Journey (75 page)

On Wednesday 5 March, as France, Germany and Russia issued a joint statement separating themselves from the US, Jack came over after PMQs. He was genuinely alarmed and worried about the political fallout. ‘If you go next Wednesday with Bush and without a second resolution, the only regime change that will be happening is in this room.’ He said it as a friend and colleague; and he meant it.

I discovered that Andrew Turnbull, who had succeeded Richard Wilson as Cabinet Secretary in September 2002, was quietly looking into the Labour Party rules and what they meant for government in the event of my falling. It would have had to be led by John Prescott and there were a series of bureaucratic consequences that Andrew was trying to work through. He wasn’t, by the way, doing it sneakily; he was quite within his rights to investigate all possibilities, and this was certainly one. But when I heard, I laughed a little uneasily and I thought: These really could be the last days in office.

I was going flat out to see if there was any juice left in the diplomatic tank. On 7 March, things got more complex still when Putin made it clear he would veto any second resolution. I knew I had about ten days in which to try to buy some time for the inspectors. I still thought it possible – though the odds were lengthening – that we could get a Saddam capitulation; or, another idea floating around, that we could agree a special blue beret (i.e. UN-backed) inspections force that would effectively take over the disarmament process. Meanwhile, I had come up with my own idea, on which I had been working with Hans Blix and some of the non-aligned countries on the UNSC.

There are five permanent members of the UNSC. Then there are another ten non-permanent members who rotate between the nations. These are drawn mainly from South American or African or Asian nations. Each of the permanent members has a veto. The non-permanent members don’t.

My idea was really born out of the essential ambiguity in the UN inspectors’ reports that Hans Blix presented. As will be seen, the reports were, as the Americans rightly said, evidence that the November 2002 UN resolution was being breached. Therefore, they said, as a matter of policy and also as a matter of law, military action was justified.

However, it will also have been seen that you could say politically: OK, there has not been full compliance, but there has been some. And it was obvious that the areas of non-compliance could be identified, in particular the failure to allow interviews outside of Iraq, the non-production of relevant documents, the refusal to provide evidence of destruction of the illicit materials, and so on. I conceived of the following idea: that we draw up a document with the UN inspectors, identifying the clusters of unresolved issues; that we spell out, on the back of it, the demands to which Saddam must yield forthwith; and that we give a limited time – seven days – for beginning total compliance, otherwise military action would follow. Blix thought Saddam could do it. I undertook to persuade the US. It would be a very hard sell.

Again, interviews were my main point of focus. In this regard, I ended up having a rather troubling series of conversations with Hans Blix. I said to him that we had to take the key people out of Iraq. That was the only way they were going even remotely to dare being honest. He was reluctant. They could be killed, he said, or their families tortured. He didn’t feel he could take that responsibility. I was a little exasperated. If they’re going to kill them, I used to say, what does that say about Saddam and compliance with 1441? Anyway, in the end he relented.

Those around me had come to the following view: if we put a resolution with such a timeline to the UNSC and it got vetoed, we could live with it, provided we got majority UNSC support. This was now a political not a legal issue.

For the week between 7 and 14 March I had a crazy schedule of calls. Since many of those to whom I was talking were on Eastern Standard Time, I would often be calling into the early hours of the morning. It was indeed a hard sell to George. His system was completely against it. His military were, not unreasonably, fearing that delay gave the enemy time – and time could mean a tougher struggle and more lives lost. This was also troubling my military. We had all sorts of contingency plans in place for what Saddam might do. He might set the oilfields on fire, release chemical or, worse, biological material, or attack Israel. His past record gave us no confidence in his trustworthiness or his humanity. There was both UK and US intelligence warning previously of this risk.

Nonetheless, I felt it worth a try. Ricardo Lagos, the president of Chile, was an ally, a really smart, sensible man, a progressive politician but with the courage to do tough things. Both he and President Fox of Mexico were in acutely uncomfortable positions: big allies of the US, but with their public opinion overwhelmingly against war.

I set out my case for delay in a note to George. We then had a call. It was tricky but I laid it on the line and reluctantly he agreed. We got the document prepared with the Blix people. It had five crucial tests in it. It would, especially on the interviews, have flushed out the regime thoroughly on what they were hiding and on whether they had any good faith.

Chile and Mexico were prepared to go along, but only up to a point. Ricardo made it clear that if there was heavy opposition from France, it would be tough for them to participate in what would then be a token vote, incapable of being passed because of a veto – and what’s more a veto not by Russia, but by France.

Unfortunately, the French position had, if anything, got harder, not softer. They were starting to say they would not support military action in any circumstances, irrespective of what the inspectors found. They were clearly enjoying a new and very strong trilateral relationship between themselves, Germany and Russia. It was effectively becoming an alternative pole of power, standing up to and taking on the US, and was bringing them some benefits in terms of Muslim and Arab sentiment.

I decided we should table the five tests anyway. We did so in the early hours of Thursday 13 March. They were immediately rejected by France. Jacques Chirac gave a very strong statement saying he would not support military action whatever the circumstances. Dominique de Villepin, at that time Foreign Minister and someone I actually liked but who just disagreed with me on this, also then rejected the tests per se. This was before the Iraqis even responded. Ricardo then explained that, in this case, he couldn’t really participate in an obviously futile charade at the UNSC. The UN route was blocked.

Meanwhile, we had resolved our own legal issues.

On 7 March, Peter Goldsmith had submitted his final opinion. As I said earlier he had been over to Washington and had had detailed discussions with the administration lawyers. He set out the arguments for and against and on balance came out in favour. Later, much was made of the ‘pressure’ on Peter to do so. The truth is he was, and is, someone of genuine integrity. He really wanted to be sure. It was difficult. The world is full of lawyers, and on this, every lawyer was having his or her shout. He felt the responsibility keenly, as he should have. There was clearly a case against in law; but there was also a case for. He debated, discussed, reflected and decided. His opinion was balanced. The argument was balanced. He did his job.

He was also one of the few lawyers who, in charge of an administrative function, had real executive capability. The changes Peter made to the role of Director of Public Prosecutions, to the Crown Prosecution Service and to criminal justice made a huge difference to the quality of the system. He put up with my frequently expressed impatience (and not always expressed politely) with the courts over their immigration, terrorism and asylum rulings. He was a stickler for proper process. But within those bounds, he was a radical, with the ability to translate the radicalism into real change.

George and I were due to meet in the Azores on 16 March, partly to bind in Spain and Portugal who were both supportive and both of whose prime ministers were under enormous heat from hostile parliamentary and public opinion. It was clear now that action was inevitable, barring Saddam’s voluntary departure. George had agreed to give him an ultimatum to quit. There was no expectation he would, however. Alastair, Jonathan and David were working hard with the Bush team, Condoleezza Rice in particular, to draw up the right statement with the right phrasing.

The mood in the UK continued to be highly volatile. On 11 March, Donald Rumsfeld inadvertently put the cat among the pigeons by suggesting at a press conference that owing to Britain’s internal politics, it may be that we shouldn’t be part of the initial military action. Some thought he was trying to put the wind up us. It was clear to me that it was just a cock-up. He was actually trying to be helpful. It didn’t help, however, and by then the military were absolutely determined, rightly, that they would be part of the action from the outset, and took amiss any sense that we might be in the second rank.

Robin Cook came and said now that it was clear that a second resolution was impossible, he would resign, and perfectly amicably we set about drawing up resignation statements. I understood the importance of the second resolution in terms of political survival and so forth. I confess I always thought it a bit odd in terms of the moral acceptability of the course of action or not. It bestowed more legitimacy, it was true, but whether we got a second resolution or not basically depended on the politics in France and Russia and their calculation of where their political interests lay. We had acted without UN authority in Kosovo. It would have been highly doubtful if we could ever have got UNSC agreement for either Bosnia or Rwanda. I never even thought about it for Sierra Leone. Yet it would be hard to argue that, morally, in each of those situations, we should not have intervened. What’s more, if the going got tough, as we have found in Afghanistan, the mere fact of UN authority does not necessarily bind people in.

However, had we got it, of course the politics, at least for a time, would have been far easier. But we didn’t and so the choice was clear, as it was for many nations’ leaders at that moment: in or out? We could count on roughly thirty to be in the military coalition, but it was plain the US and UK would bear the brunt.

On the morning of 16 March, we got up early and flew to the Azores. It was a slightly surreal event. On the face of it we were still pushing for a political solution. There were some last-minute hopes of an Arab initiative to get Saddam out; or of a Saddam capitulation. George was content to adopt the line that we were going to hold out every last hope for peace. We sat and talked for a while in the strange little waiting room outside the main room where the meeting had taken place. It was at the Lajes airbase and the facilities were basic, as most military airbases are, the rooms functional, the decor pretty plain save for some
azulejos
(Portuguese tiles) on the walls. It was a beautiful island – that much we could see from the flight in – but we saw little of it.

We rehearsed again the main arguments. He was completely calm. He thought we had to send out a message of total clarity to the world: have anything to do with WMD and we were going to come after you. More even than me, he was focused on the possibility of terrorist groups getting hold of WMD material. ‘I am just not going to be the president on whose watch it happens,’ he said. ‘I love my country and these people threaten it by their hatred for us.’

It’s easy to mock the simplicity of the George Bush view of the world. Some of it does indeed appear Manichaean. On the other hand, the simplicity was born out of a very direct analysis which it was hard to dispute. For all its faults and the limitations natural in any entity containing humanity, America is a great and free country. There’s lots of things about the US which I find incompatible with the way we Europeans think about things: guns and capital punishment and the prison system and some of what seems indifference to inner-city poverty, for example. But plenty of Americans also disagree with those things.

None of that should diminish its strength, its appeal or its essential goodness as a nation. I know that ‘goodness as a nation’ sounds odd, but they and we have systems of government and basic rights and freedoms that are ‘good’. Now some nations can’t achieve those freedoms yet, but are on their way and will get there. I believe China is such a nation. It has unique problems. It has the world’s largest population and more than fifty different ethnic varieties within it. It will take time to develop politically. We should be sensitive to the stresses and strains of that development.

But you look at other nations and you see no sign of benign evolution. You see, instead, power corruptly wielded, a nation held back, people oppressed and a future denied. There is no house on the hill which makes the present struggle worthwhile; just a horizon full of deeper despair as far as the eye can see.

For those people in that bleak wilderness, America does stand out; it does shine; it may not be a house in their land they can aspire to, but it is a house they can see in the distance, and in seeing, know that how they do live is not how they must live.

So when I look back and I reread all the documents and the memories flood back to me of all those agonised and agonising meetings, calls and deliberations, I know that there was never any way Britain was not going to be with the US at that moment, once we went down the UN route and Saddam was in breach. Of course, such a statement is always subject to
in extremis
correction. A crazy act of aggression? No, we would not have supported that. But given the history, you couldn’t call Saddam a crazy target.

Personally, I have little doubt that at some point we would have to have dealt with him. But throughout I comforted myself, as I put it in the Glasgow speech, that if we were wrong, we would have removed a tyrant; and as a matter of general principle, I was in favour of doing that.