Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
MONDAY 22 MAY 2000
MR P HAIN
MP AND MR
J BEVAN
Mr Illsley
60. How do you achieve agreement if you have
no control over the diamonds?
(Mr Hain) That is why we need to focus on the diamond
fields and need to give that a priority and we have done quite
a lot of work on that.
Sir Peter Emery
61. I give no apology for returning to a question
raised first of all by my right honourable friend, mainly because
I was led to believe I was going to be called earlier. In the
beginning of April the FCO told the Committee "The situation
in Sierra Leone has improved considerably since Spring 1999"
and "... offers the people of Sierra Leone the prospect of
sustainable peace after eight years of brutal conflict".
You recall that, do you?
(Mr Hain) Yes.
62. Do you also recall that you were saying
after your visit to Sierra Leone that there was no reason to believe
that Sankoh would not honour the agreement which he had made,
the Lomé Agreement.
(Mr Hain) No, I did not say there was no reason to
believe that.
63. Then the quotations in The Sunday Times
yesterday are incorrect, are they where they say "... Hain
said yesterday. `I expected him to honour the promise he'd made
to me'"? Is that incorrect?
(Mr Hain) No, that is very different from saying I
had no reason to believe that he might not. I sat opposite him
at a table, one of the most unpleasant and disreputable individuals
I have ever had to encounter in diplomatic terms or undiplomatic
terms. I repeatedly said to him that he had signed the Agreement
and asked whether he was going to honour it. He said yes. I pressed
him again. I then held him to that in public, which is about the
only diplomatic tool available in those circumstances. Yes, I
did say that, but what it was meant to do was put him on the spot.
All the time we were intensely suspicious of his real activities,
his real motives and we were right to be so.
64. If it was only yesterday that you were saying
"I expected him to honour the promise he'd made to me"—
(Mr Hain) Mid January.
65.—that seems to me you did.
(Mr Hain) May I correct? That speech was made in mid-January
in Sierra Leone, in Freetown and The Sunday Times—
66. I am sorry, the quotation is what you said
the day before yesterday according to The Sunday Times.
(Mr Hain) I am not sure whether you are quoting the
speech or what you are quoting there.
67. I am quoting "'There's no justification
for criticism,' Hain said yesterday. `I expected him to honour
the promise he'd made to me'".
(Mr Hain) That is right.
68. Therefore it was a surprise when the thing
all went wrong.
(Mr Hain) No. With somebody as Machiavellian as Foday
Sankoh, with diamonds under his control, there was always a suspicion
that he was playing a double game. Everybody constantly tried
to address that question. It was alive on the streets and in the
corridors of power in Sierra Leone. You could feel it. He was
the number one issue and he always has been.
69. Why then were we not more prepared for what
we were warned about by Mr Penfold before he left as High Commissioner,
that he was afraid that the whole thing was going to blow up in
our face?
(Mr Hain) We need to be very clear about what message
was received from the departing High Commissioner, who, by the
way, had completed his tour of duty and was departing, as all
British Heads of Post depart, after their tour of duty ends. There
is nothing unusual about that. The report in The Sunday Times
is simply not accurate.
70. Can we then have, either in public or under
confidential cover, the last report of Mr Penfold to the Foreign
Office which will sustain that position?
(Mr Hain) I am very happy to give the Committee a
briefing in confidence on that. Obviously this was a private communication.
However, I shall say this, if it will help. Mr Penfold expressed
the view which President Kabbah had asked him to pass on, that
Brigadier Richards should stay on, having done a short tour of
duty and become what is effectively the Chief of Defence Staff,
a British serving soldier, of an army which did not exist, the
Sierra Leone army. That was in effect the nature of the message
we received. That was not part of our objective. We were not about
to put a British serving soldier in as Chief of Defence Staff
of a Sierra Leone army which did not exist. The priority there,
and our officials were carrying out ministerial policies in responding
to that message, was to stiffen the United Nations peacekeeping
operation.
71. Is it not the case that what we were being
asked to do, because of the sudden death of Maxwell Khobe, the
Nigerian who had been acting as the coordinator of the Sierra
Leone troops, was put a British officer in place of a Nigerian
officer and that if that position was not properly filled then
there was great likelihood of the RUF coming back, the situation
deteriorating? Is that not the request?
(Mr Hain) The whole situation is unfortunately, as
the world tends to be, rather more complicated than as reported
in yesterday's Sunday Times. We had persistent intelligence, we
did not need a message transmitted by The Sunday Times or in any
other way, to inform us that the situation was very fragile. We
had intelligence telling us that. We knew that the death of the
general created a gap which needed to be filled. We were in constant
contact with the commander of the UN forces there who was keeping
us briefed, so if I may say so, this particular report is exaggerated
in its importance. It is not as it is reported.
72. As the Foreign Secretary said on the floor
of the House on 5 May, "I make it clear to the House and
to the people of Sierra Leone that Britain will not abandon its
commitment to Sierra Leone", is not the fact that we would
not assist in ensuring that the Sierra Leone forces were properly
coordinated, as they had been by the Nigerians, and if the warning
was that if that did not happen it was very likely that we would
see the rebels come back, is that not something where we ought
to have picked up the cudgel if we are supporting the people of
Sierra Leone?
(Mr Hain) No, because that was not the message which
we received. If it had been the message we received in the way
that The Sunday Times reported, it would not have been an appropriate
response to the circumstances we faced. The priority was to stiffen
the United Nations peacekeeping operation, not to put one British
soldier, albeit a very senior and expert one, into the position
which the message suggested. That was simply not what was required
in order to deal with the situation.
73. Just to be absolutely clear on this, and
I should not want any misunderstanding between the two of us,
in other words it is not correct that President Kabbah asked through
Mr Penfold but asked the British Government to find a British
officer to take the place of the Nigerian general who had died.
It is not what he asked.
(Mr Hain) No, I am not saying that.
74. Ah.
(Mr Hain) No; before you say "Ah", with
respect, the context in which this report is being put is "Foreign
Office ignored top level warning on Sierra Leone crisis".
I shall ask Mr Bevan to fill you in as it is very important we
get it right and we get it on the record. We received a message—we
receive lots of messages from presidents of other countries—and
in this situation we obviously took particular heed of it. It
was not the appropriate thing to do to deal with the situation
to accede to that request. That is the long and the short of it.
Perhaps Mr Bevan could just fill in exactly what happened as that
might be helpful.
75. Just to be clear again, nothing to do with
The Sunday Times, to do with this Committee and this Committee's
hearing, you are accepting that President Kabbah did ask the British
Government for a British officer to replace the Nigerian who had
died and who had been coordinating for President Kabbah the forces
in Sierra Leone.
(Mr Hain) We had a message from Mr Penfold transmitting
this request but it was not a request which would have dealt with
the problem that it was meant to address. It simply was not.
76. That was not the judgement of President
Kabbah. He thought it was.
(Mr Hain) We are a sovereign state and we make our
own assessment of a situation and our own judgement of what British
forces contribute or not.
77. You turned down the request. That is now
clear.
(Mr Hain) Let us get the detail clear because we are
really manufacturing a huge item out of something which is relatively
unimportant.
(Mr Bevan) We had a series of requests from President
Kabbah on a series of dates, including around about the second
week of April, which is the one referred to in The Sunday Times
article. He asked for a range of things. He asked firstly whether
Brigadier Richards, who was visiting Sierra Leone, could stay
on. He asked whether we could bring forward the officer we were
also planning to supply to help the nation programme to train
and equip the Sierra Leone army, to which I have referred. He
also asked whether we could move a British official, who was already
there in the context of the programme to produce a more accountable
and effective army, whether we could move him into the CDS's office.
The thrust of what he was asking as the Minister has described
was really asking essentially for a senior British officer to
take control of the Sierra Leone army. We did not accede to that
central request, for the reason the Minister has outlined. Our
policy was to support the UN forces, which were then building
up in Sierra Leone and in slower time to ensure that we enhanced
and built up an effective and democratically accountable Sierra
Leone army. We did agree to move the officer he requested into
the CDS's office physically to provide a degree of guidance to
the Sierra Leone CDS. In fact by that time the President had already
appointed a new CDS to replace Khobe, the Nigerian. He had appointed
a Sierra Leone CDS. That was what we did. We did it for the reasons
the Minister has outlined and as the Minister has said, we did
not actually believe that the request was directed at the problem.
The real issue was to build up the United Nations. That is what
we have been seeking to achieve over the last few months. Following
that actual conversation, we did urge President Kabbah to talk
to the UN in order to address the issue he was concerned about.
He did so and Mr Penfold subsequently reported that the UN were
actually taking a much more visible and robust line on the streets
of Freetown, which Mr Penfold reported was providing very useful
reassurance to the people of Freetown.
78. Thank you Mr Bevan, that is all very helpful,
but it has in no way altered the fact that the only request which
was made after the death of Maxwell Khobe for a British replacement—one
of those other requests but the one request I have referred to—was
turned down.
(Mr Hain) For the reasons both Mr Bevan and I have
explained.
79. It was turned down.
(Mr Hain) No, I do not think we can leave it at that.
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