Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1680
- 1699)
TUESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 1998
MS ANN
GRANT and MR
CRAIG MURRAY
1680. Can you say that throughout this period
it was the view of the Foreign Office that ECOWAS had no basis
in international law for intervening militarily in Sierra Leone?
(Ms Grant) That was my judgment, yes.
Chairman: Thank you.
Sir John Stanley
1681. At the very outset this morning, Ms
Grant, you were extremely and most commendably candid about the
inadequacy of the briefing for Mr Lloyd for his Adjournment Debate.
Could I put it to you that there were three really conspicuously
inaccurate pieces of briefing in relation to Sandline? First,
there was the statement that a deal involving Sandline was, in
the words of the briefing, "in the offing". That is
a quite extraordinary statement, I put it to you, to have put
into Mr Lloyd's briefing. You knew absolutely at this particular
point that a contract had been entered into and indeed the arms
had been shipped and indeed had arrived over a month earlier.
(Ms Grant) I did not know that, actually. I did
not know that the arms had been shipped or had arrived until Customs
& Excise told me.
1682. Does that argue some lack of liaison
between the intelligence coming into your department and going
into the policy area?
(Ms Grant) I do not think so. I do not think there
was any information on the shipment by that time.
1683. So you still believed on March 12th
that no contract had been entered into between Sandline and President
Kabbah?
(Ms Grant) No, there was a question of the contract,
what you raised was that the arms had been shipped and delivered.
1684. So what was the deal "in the
offing", referred to in the briefing to Mr Lloyd which, mercifully
for him, he did not use in his speech?
(Ms Grant) As I said in my introduction, I think
it was mistakes on whether things were to happen, had happened
or might happen which was the weakness of the briefing, and I
regretted that I had not myself sat down and checked through the
briefing as a whole in such a way as to identify those weaknesses.
I do not defend it at all.
1685. The second point in the briefing,
which again, mercifully for Mr Lloyd, he did not use because the
precise question was not put to him, was describing Sandline as
military advisers. You knew from Mr Penfold's minute of 2nd February
not least that Sandline were going way beyond simply the provision
of military advice, they were in the arms supply business.
(Ms Grant) There were allegations that they were
in the arms supply business which were being investigated by Customs
& Excise.
1686. That would have been a better thing
to have stated perhaps?
(Ms Grant) Indeed.
1687. You referred to the tense change,
and I appreciate that the formal reference had only taken place
48 hours earlier, but just for the record, the briefing did actually
state "We will refer ...", in the future tense, "...
any detailed allegations to Customs & Excise", when of
course the reference had taken place two days previously. Can
you tell us, against that background, given the importance which
I know every member of this Committee attaches to the accurate
briefing of ministers before they come before Parliament, what
steps you have taken within your own command to try to really
tighten up, sharpen up, on the briefing for ministers before they
answer questions and take debates in the House?
(Ms Grant) As I say, I do take and have always
taken those responsibilities very seriously. We were particularly
unfortunate at the time when Mr Andrews was preparing the briefing
in that his desk officer and his immediate boss were both away,
so the quality control supervisory function which would normally
have been performed by Mr Murray I was doing in between other
work. I think it is an unusual and exceptional lapse. Obviously
one of the lessons we have all learned from this is the need to
be particularly rigorous and careful on briefing. As I say, that
is only building on something we have always tried to do, I am
sorry in this respect we did not manage to do it. I think the
systems are now in place and new guidance has been circulated
which reaffirms the importance of a clear, concise and accurate
briefing. I could draw attention to the Legg Report conclusions
that state that none of these omissions were in any way intended
to be misleading.
1688. Mr Lloyd in the course of the debate
did make what were some, as it turned out and I am sure he made
them in good faith, very ill-judged references to the Observer
article. I did notice in the documentation which the Committee
has had access to, comparing what was made available to Baroness
Symons and what was made available to Mr Lloyd, it appears while
Baroness Symons had the Observer article, had the very,
very important Africa confidential piece and had the full exchange
of correspondence between Lord Avebury and the department, all
of which were highly germane to the briefing of Mr Lloyd, Mr Lloyd
did not on the briefing pack we have seen have any of those papers,
which would have certainly caused me to have made a very, very
different response to the Observer article.
(Ms Grant) I think the explanation as to why Baroness
Symons had all that background information was because of Lord
Avebury's personal interest and because she was answering a question
in the Lords. We had expected, as I think Legg reflects—Mr
Andrews and I had expected—that there might be quite some
discussion of Sandline and/or related matters in the Lords debate,
which would have meant we would have to refine and adjust Mr Lloyd's
briefing, so we thought we might have another crack at that. In
the event, that did not happen and the occasion to revise the
briefing was not taken, and again I have apologised for the fact
that the one debate did not fully reflect the other.
1689. Could you explain this point, which
I find most mystifying? Could you explain why the entire basis
of the Foreign Office's formal reference of the allegations against
Sandline to Customs & Excise were accompanied by the Avebury
correspondence but the Penfold minute to yourself, making an absolutely
clear statement from a senior Foreign Office official about the
Sandline contract and the arms which were going to be supplied,
was not included in the formal reference to Customs & Excise?
(Ms Grant) As I had to admit to Ms Abbott earlier,
I had thought it had gone. So in my view both pieces of paper
were important pieces of evidence and I assumed that Customs &
Excise had them. I was not aware of Mr Murray's reservations about
sending them and I had no such reservations myself.
1690. Can I come to a last couple of points
please? I recognise that we have been fortunate to have very full
access to these policy papers and I fully accept that submissions
go through a whole series of drafts and officials, quite reasonably,
need not feel accountable for anything except the final advice
which is given. So I am making this point, and I want to stress
this, not as any criticism but it is a very, very illuminating
point which I have found. It is in the first draft of the reply
to Lord Avebury's letter to you of 5th February. If I may just
be allowed to refer to what it said, it said, "In response
to your letter we have looked again at Article 6 of UNSCR 1132.
Its purpose is plainly to stop the supply of arms to the junta
in Sierra Leone and it does not seem to cover the kind of training
and support activity which Sandline have been undertaking on behalf
on President Kabbah." That sentence was taken out by the
Foreign Office legal advisers with a very clear "no".
I found it very illuminating that the officials providing that
draft should have put that construction on Article 6 of the UN
Security Council Resolution, a construction simply in terms of
stopping the supply of arms to the junta, in a draft reply to
Lord Avebury. This, of course, was the same construction that
Mr Penfold had put on the Security Council Resolution. What I
want to ask you is, it would seem to me, and I am quite certain
officials were wanting to give an accurate answer to Lord Avebury,
to be indicative that some of your officials were not entirely
clear what indeed was the ambit of the UN Resolution, and some
of them did believe that it did basically apply simply to the
ban on arms to the junta.
(Ms Grant) I can only repeat what I said about
what I believed to be the primary purpose of the policy, and the
distinction between that and the comprehensive legal application
of the policy. I think Mr Murray was more closely involved in
the re-drafting or the drafting of that minute than I was, and
I do not know if it would be acceptable for Mr Murray to comment
too?
1691. Of course.
(Mr Murray) Yes, I am looking at a draft—I
am not 100 per cent certain I am looking at exactly the same draft
but if I am not, please correct me. If I can say something about
the history of the drafting. Tim Andrews did a first draft, I
made some changes to it and it then went to legal advisers who
changed it again. As it left me it said, "We have been aware
of two areas of Sandline's activity in and around Sierra Leone
providing security personnel to the diamond industry and providing
training and logistic support advice to the Kamajors." It
then went on to say, "Your letter raises an allegation that
Sandline are involved in the supply of arms to Sierra Leone and
that this applies in contravention of the UNSCR 1132. This is
a new allegation." I think the key point is that arms was
a new allegation but we knew about training. To come on to the
paragraph you quoted, where you said, "In response to your
letter we have looked again at Article 6 of UNSCR 1132. Its purpose
is plainly to stop the supply of arms to the illegal junta in
charge of Sierra Leone and it does not seem to cover the kind
of training and support activity which Sandline have been undertaking
...". That again emphasises that what we knew Sandline was
proposing to do was training and support which we could not stop
because it was not illegal. The distinction I was seeking to make
in drafting this was a distinction between arms, which was illegal,
and training, which was not; not a distinction between whether
it was for the junta or whether it was for President Kabbah. That
is a political, not a legal point.
1692. Ms Grant, you are satisfied, or not,
that all the officials in your command understood right from the
outset that the arms ban applied to all parties?
(Ms Grant) I am.
1693. One last question. Mr Lloyd wrote
to Lord Avebury on 3rd March and he said this in his letter to
Lord Avebury, "You ask whether we had any prior knowledge
of the Nigerian military intervention in Sierra Leone. The answer
is that we did not." When Mr Lloyd uses "we", of
course he is embracing the entire department.
(Ms Grant) Indeed.
1694. Is that still your position?
(Ms Grant) It is.
1695. That nowhere in the department was
there any prior knowledge of the Nigerian military intervention?
(Ms Grant) It is. As Mr Murray said, it took us
by surprise.
Sir John Stanley: I
am sure you will be looking closely at the evidence we took in
private this morning, Ms Grant.
Mr Rowlands
1696. I wonder, Ms Grant, because you are
the continuity factor in all this, the personnel have changed
but you have been the officer who has covered the whole period,
if we can ask you a little more about the policy context and particularly
the policy, following on Sir John's question, to draft a UN Resolution
in such all-embracing terms? What was the point of doing so when
in fact the junta was supposed to be the chief target?
(Ms Grant) Again, I am recalling a process in
which I was not directly involved but Mr Everard was—
1697. Mr Everard, was it?
(Ms Grant) It was Mr Everard who was, if you like,
the action officer in AD(E) on the Resolution. He was the one
who went to the meetings with the UN Department and others. As
I am sure you remember, when we are putting together a UN Resolution
there is the geographical department responsible for the policy
and the bilateral relations, and the input from the experts from
the UN Department who know about framing resolutions and also
the international legal position. As I understand it, the political
purpose, as I say, is the one I have underlined, the very broad
brush one of wanting to restore President Kabbah, his elected
government, by peaceful means. I think there were meetings at
which Mr Everard was present at which this political point of
needing to apply some pressure to the junta was raised, and the
options of economic sanctions and diplomatic negotiation, which
had been adopted by the regional states was agreed. When it came
to the arms embargo, I think Mr Everard did make the point that
our purpose was to stop arms getting through to the junta. That
was our main aim as a geographical department. I think he was
advised, but again this is aural and second-hand, that actually
it was very difficult to frame an embargo in such a way as to
be effective unless it was geographic, unless it applied to the
whole of Sierra Leone. If that was the case, we had to think of
the down-side of that. Was there any disadvantage in applying
it to Sierra Leone as a whole rather than to the junta as a government?
In my view, there was no significant disadvantage. As Mr Murray
has said, and we all agreed, the area was awash with arms. President
Kabbah's problem was not that he did not have any arms, it was
that he did not have an army, he did not have a structure, he
did not have the wherewithal or the means to organise himself
a return to government. The only force which was capable of doing
that, in my view and I think in that of most observers, was the
ECOMOG forces led by Nigeria.
1698. The process by which the UN Resolution
emerged is described in paragraph 3.10 on, which is not a part
of the Report that we have spent too much time on. You yourself
were not involved in any of those processes—Cabinet Office
discussion, et cetera—which are described in those paragraphs?
(Ms Grant) As I say, I recall what Mr Everard
told me. I was following it quite closely, I was not the official
who attended the meetings but I was kept very closely in touch
by the people who did.
1699. There is in paragraph 3.11 another
reason why there was concern about the need to extend the ban
to everyone, and that was the fear that in fact arms would end
up in the hands of the Kamajors. Was that a fear you and your
department shared?
(Ms Grant) It is difficult, as you know, from
Cabinet Office minutes because they do not attribute particular
views to particular officials, so I cannot say that this came
from the Foreign Office.
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