Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640 - 648)
THURSDAY 16 JULY 1998
RT
HON ROBIN
COOK, MP,
MR MICHAEL
ARTHUR, CMG
and MR ROBERT
MACAIRE
Chairman
640. The question is was that not strange?
(Mr Cook) As to the failure to inform ministers,
frankly I share your sentiment on that point. That is going to
be one of the main elements I think on which Sir Thomas Legg must
adjudicate.
Ms Abbott
641. I have just been reading the summary,
obviously there are telegrams which colleagues will want to read
very carefully. March is when Penfold comments on the contacts
with security firms.
(Mr Cook) Can you hold on a second while I find
that one.
642. Page 13 it is a teleletter. It says
contacts with security firms. I am saying that is something colleagues
will want to look at very carefully. Moving on to page 17 and
the telegram on 13 March where Penfold explains the contents of
a letter of 30 December. Is that the letter you are referring
to which the Department is saying they never received a copy of?
(Mr Cook) Yes.
643. He says he provided a memo and you
are saying there is no copy of that memo?
(Mr Cook) No, I do not think that is the case.
The Department is not denying it has the memo of 2nd February.
That followed the meeting when he came in after Sandline and he
was advised that he must put this in writing and that was the
memo that was then supplied on 2nd February. There is no suggestion
that the Department has not got that.
Chairman
644. It will be available to the Committee
after the publication?
(Mr Cook) If the Committee requests it, yes, but
what we have agreed is that after Legg reports I am willing to
entertain applications from the Committee.
Chairman: We will
make that application.
Ms Abbott
645. I am just wondering on 1st April—page
18—Penfold sent a teleletter saying "It is totally
wrong to infer that I had given any prior approval".
(Mr Cook) Yes.
646. Presumably somebody put that to him?
It would not have said that out of the clear blue sky.
(Mr Cook) The people who were putting this were
Sandline. That telegram followed long after the Customs inquiry
commenced and after it was established that this would be Sandline's
defence.
Mr Heath
647. I would like again to go back to page
13 of the evidence which is important. On March 9th, Foreign Secretary,
Tony Lloyd wrote to Eric Avebury in response to a letter of his
of February 24th. He said in that letter to Avebury "We have
asked our High Commissioner to investigate further these suggestions
and other similar newspaper accounts". I can find no reference
in the telegrams subsequent to that date which suggest that the
High Commissioner ever answered that query if indeed it was put
from Tony Lloyd. That is question one. Question two is again on
13 March the teleletter which is indicated there. Was that teleletter
sent as an immediate response to the Adjournment Debate on March
12 initiated by my colleague, Simon Hughes, and if so was the
Minister correctly advised to be as explicit as he was in saying:
"The suggestion that Britain is conspiring with hired killers
is wrong I wish to make that clear on behalf of the Government".
At that point we did not have the information from the High Commission,
is that right? The following day somebody from your Department
contacted Penfold and asked him what his view was on the detail?
There was nothing before that date on which Mr Lloyd could make
that assumption?
(Mr Cook) I would not want to speculate as to
what prompted the letter of 13 March. Mr Heath will now be able
to see the letter himself, I do not have it to hand. It may or
may not in its opening paragraph give guidance as to what prompted
the telegram. Even with all that is now known of Sandline's activities,
Mr Lloyd's statement that we did not conspire with hired killers
is absolutely correct. First of all, Sandline themselves would
deny that they were killers, and indeed their involvement in the
whole operation appears to have been extremely marginal. My understanding
is that they had 18 people there, mainly in training, and they
provided one elderly Russian helicopter which flew around the
Colonel of ECOMOG which was not a separate operation. Their helicopter
was leased to ECOMOG. Indeed, one of the issues that has caused
quite a lot of resentment in West Africa is that the fighting
and the dying was overwhelmingly done by the ten Nigerian battalions
who do find it rather difficult to wrap around their mind the
preoccupation of the British press that the coup was engineered,
organised and achieved by 18 employees of Sandline.
648. I do not want to leave the wrong impression.
I am not a conspiracy theorist about ministerial involvement in
this. I was very worried that the right questions were not asked
from the Department to the High Commission, in fact. That is the
point I wanted to make.
(Mr Cook) I have already gone on record in the
House as expressing my concern about the brief that was provided
to Mr Lloyd for that occasion. That is also something on which
I would expect comment from Sir Thomas Legg.
Chairman: Foreign
Secretary, we have made progress and we are grateful. We will
be examining the telegrams. Thank you for your attendance.
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