Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP, MR TIM
DOWSE AND
MR PETER
RICKETTS CMG
MONDAY 28 OCTOBER 2002
160. Given that over here we had some amber,
red, black alerts, goodness knows why, should there not be a continuing
grade of advice that the Foreign office give to its nations when
they are abroad?
(Mr Straw) We do it all the time. It is constantly
updated. I was looking over the weekend at the updating of advice
in other countries within South East Asia on the basis of intelligence
assessments and the changes will be made public very shortly.
All the time one is looking at this. Life has also to go on. Some
of us here, including myself, have had direct experience of Irish
terrorist outrages and we had to take precautions, but we also
had to ensure that we as a society were not defeated by IRA terrorism
which, it will be recalled, led to the assassination of a Conservative
Member of Parliament just the other side of Bridge Street; it
led to an attempt to assassinate the whole of the British Cabinet
on not one but two occasions, and led to many innocent people
being killed or injured. Life had to go on because if we simply
decided to seize up the economy and life altogether the IRA would
have won and we could not allow that to happen. That applies equally
to the whole of the international community. I personally was
once involved in a terrorist attack so I have some sense of what
it feels like, albeit I was not badly injured. Life has to go
on.
Mr Maples
161. Foreign Secretary, of course we completely
follow that and I have heard from other people that when the IRA
made warnings if you publicised them all life would have ground
to a halt. What we are trying to do is to get some idea of where
the Foreign Office strikes that balance because we regard perhaps
your second most important duty as the protection of British citizens
abroad. I wonder if you would deal specifically with one matter
which was in The Sunday Telegraph on 20 October, which
quoted two US intelligence officers as saying that the CIA had
briefed that Bali was a target and had passed that to the British
Government two days before the bomb blast but it was not made
public, and also that Britain was briefed that Islamic terrorists
could be planning to attack night clubs in Bali two days before
the blasts. Is that true or false?
(Mr Straw) I will have to write in to the Committee[3]
but my recollection is that we could find no provenance for the
first part of what was said, that there was a CIA report sent
to us two days before the bombing.
162. There was no source?
(Mr Straw) No provenance for that story in The
Sunday Telegraph saying that we received a report from the
CIA two days before. That is my clear recollection. If I am wrong
of course I will write to the Committee. There are two bases for
saying that. One is that people have been through the files and
had a look, but the second is this, that what is a matter of public
record is that at all material times the advice given by the United
States State Department in respect of Bali was the same as was
given by the United Kingdom Foreign Office.
Chairman
163. And the second point Mr Maples made?
(Mr Straw) That meant that US diplomats themselves
from Jakarta were on holiday in Bali at the time of the blast,
at least six according to the US Ambassador in Jakarta. It is
wholly improbable that had such a warning been received, leaving
aside whether it had been passed on to us, the United States would
not have acted on it in respect of its own diplomats, so that
is why.
Mr Maples
164. You said on the first one that you had
looked through the files. The second one was saying that Britain
was brief that Islamic terrorists could be planning to attack
night clubs in Bali two days before the blasts.
(Mr Straw) I have no evidence to that at all. You
must not always believe what you see in newspapers.
165. That is why I am asking.
(Mr Straw) Not even The Sunday Telegraph. I
have already told the Committee, as I told the House last week,
that the reference to Bali was much more generic information about
a threat which we received and it came to us on 27 September and
was assessed by 8 October. May I also say that this is exactly
the sort of detail which will be examined by the Intelligence
and Security Committee.
166. I just thought that since these two particular
matters were in the open it was fair to give you the opportunity
to deny them. The second one, according to the newspapers, specifically
related to Bali and to night clubs.
(Mr Straw) I have given the answer to that, which
is that there was a generic threat which covered six islands.
Sir John Stanley
167. Foreign Secretary, going back to the question
of Iraq, both you and the Prime Minister have made it very clear
that if there is to be the commitment of British military forces
in Iraq this will only be done on a clear legally justified basis.
It has been reported that the law officers advised the Government
that a new UN resolution would be required to provide such a legally
justified basis. I am not going to ask you for the law officers'
advice because I know what answer I would get, but can I ask you
in front of this Committee to say what is the Government's position?
Does the Government believe that there is a legally valid basis
for the commencement of military operations against Iraq without
there being a new UN resolution?
(Mr Straw) The Government's view is that there might
be, is the answer to this.
168. There might be a legally valid basis, not
a certain one?
(Mr Straw) It all depends on the circumstances at
the time, Sir John, before you get too excited about my answer,
and that must be the case. Colleagues will know that there are
a number of bases for judgments about whether military action
is or is not justified in particular circumstances, one of which
is a new Security Council resolution. A second will be existing
Security Council resolutions. A third will be rights either under
the UN Charter or a customary international statement to use force
in certain circumstances, so you have to take them all together.
The final judgments will obviously be made on the basis of advice
which we will receive from the law officers and which we do not
disclose. Both the Prime Minister and I have said that we are
obviously committed to ensuring that actions we take are consistent
with our obligations in international law. There are so many possible
scenarios that I do not think there is a lot of point in speculating
about whether force would or would not be justified in this circumstance
or that circumstance because we have not got there yet. Would
we prefer there to be a resolution or resolutions from the Security
Council? Yes. That is why I am devoting so much time and attention
to securing exactly that end.
169. If there is no new UN resolution do you
envisage that the legal basis for any commencement of military
operations will rest on a pre-emptive right of self-defence or
do you think it will rest on the non-compliance by the previous
aggressor, namely Iraq, with the previous cease-fire agreement,
thereby allowing the members of the previous coalition to recommence
hostilities on the basis of non-compliance with the cease-fire?
(Mr Straw) With respect, Sir John, I am not going
to be tempted down that path of speculation. I prefer to rest
on my previous answer which is that there is a wide range of circumstances.
We are talking here about a range of circumstances which are not
fully certain at the moment. It depends on the circumstances at
the time. No decisions have been made at this stage for us to
be involved in military action and I cannot say exactly what the
circumstances would be.
170. I would like to ask you lastly in the legal
area on the general issue of international law in relation to
pre-emptive strikes on which the Committee took some extensive
evidence last week. The US Government, in its National Security
Strategy of the United States of America, which was published
last month, has stated quite clearly that the existing legal basis
for pre-emptive action is no longer valid against the threats
which you have outlined to the Committee this afternoon. On page
15 of that document it says that legal scholars and international
juries often condition the legitimacy of pre-emption on the existence
of an imminent threat and the US administration makes the case
that that is not a basis that is really valid any longer when
you do not have threats necessarily posed by identifiable nation
states, when the threats may come from unseen terrorist groups
and using weapons of mass destruction which may be wholly invisible,
like biological weapons, and when the first indication of some
terrible tragedy is that people in the target area start contracting
terrible fatal diseases. I would like to ask you to say on behalf
of the Government whether you accept the general thesis that the
existing boundary of international law on pre-emption, based on
having to demonstrate imminent threat, now looks as if it has
been rendered somewhat obsolete or certainly anachronistic by
the way in which the threat is developing on the lines I have
indicated and you have indicated this afternoon to the Committee.
(Mr Straw) The first thing to say about the national
security strategy document is that it is a United States document;
it is not ours. The second point is this, that international law,
like our own common law, is not a fixed quantum. It changes as
circumstances change. If what is being said is that international
law has to adapt to threats that were not anticipated even ten
years ago, the answer to that has to be yes. It is worth bearing
in mind, and I do not know when you took evidence on this but
having got into the concept of pre-emption in international law,
that it arose, amusingly enough, from the British Government in
The Caroline in 1837 deciding to take-pre-emptive action
against what we would argue was a rather difficult state which
we thought was hiding what we regarded as terrorists, and the
difficult state was the United States and the terrorists were
Canadians. We impounded The Caroline boat and rendered
it unsaleable in order to pre-empt action by these marauding bands
of Canadians who had been given shelter by the United States,
and that led to a protest by the United States and led them to
develop the concept of international law. Circumstances have changed
since then. I do not speak for a second for the United States
Government; they can speak for themselves, but all I can say is
that I do not find anything irrational at all about the approach
of the US and their desire, which we have to share with the rest
of the civilised world, to adjust their mechanisms to deal with
the new threats which arose most lucidly on 11 September. Had
we known on 10 September, for example, that the planes which had
been hijacked in that way were for certain going to be used as
explosives against the World Trade Center, then some difficult
judgments would have had to be made about bringing those planes
down, and if they had been brought down the correct judgment would
have been made, horrible though that would have been. Had we known
some weeks before about the possibility of this group of terrorists
committing such a terrorist threat, then it would have been wise
and sensible and appropriate to have taken military action against
them. I read what the United States is saying as not much more
than that. It is not that they are going to waste their time identifying
some remote academic threat and then removing the government in
the state concerned because in the real world life is not like
that and governments have to prioritise their actions, but should
we now be increasing our efforts against international terrorism
and should we be pre-empting the sort of thing they did in Bali
and the sort of thing they did in Moscow? Yes indeed. I think
of the entirely reasonable demands on me in the House of Commons
last Monday for information about what we knew in advance and
to improve our intelligence base in the future. All of that is
directed to one aim, namely, that we should develop our systems
so that we are better able to pre-empt both the possibility of
terrorist action and its consequences than we are at the moment.
Chairman
171. No-one would doubt that the circumstances
you have described would come squarely within imminence and we
would not need to look at a wider definition of pre-emption. Before
calling Mr Hamilton can I try and sweep up what Mr Mackinlay and
Sir John have said in respect of self-defence? Have you ever sought
to rely in this case on self-defence under customary law or Fifty
One and how would you seek to explain to a British citizen that
we as the United Kingdom need to defend ourselves against Iraq?
One can understand and easily explain to a British citizen that
Kuwait or Saudi Arabia might talk about self-defence. How do we
apply that to the United Kingdom?
(Mr Straw) Mr Anderson, apologies for not being tempted
down the path of various scenarios. Let me be clear about the
position here. We wish to see Saddam Hussein disarmed of his weapons
of mass destruction. We wish to see disarmament of those weapons
of mass destruction both because of the threat which they pose
to his own people, to the region and to the wider international
community and also because he is in flagrant defiance of the international
community. We have made the world relatively safer over the last
60 years because of the relative success of our international
institutions based on the United Nations, and if we want to have
a safer world still in the future that system has to be upheld
and enforced. That is what I am aiming for. What is the best chance
of resolving the Iraqi situation peacefully? It is by preparing
to take military action and certainly not speculating publicly
about the circumstances in which it would be taken. That is why,
I am afraid, I am not willing to be taken down that path. Saddam
Hussein should be in no doubt that if he fails to comply with
the rule of international law then I believe most people in the
international community think that force should then be used.
Mr Hamilton
172. That brings me quite conveniently, Foreign
Secretary, to the questions I want to ask which relate to the
consequences of war against Iraq. You will recall in1991 during
the then Gulf War when Saddam Hussein's back was against the wall
that he fired missiles into Israel. Thirty nine Scud missiles
in all were fired and at the time the then Prime Minister of Israel,
Yitzhak Shamir, refused to retaliate and the world praised Israel
for that. The current Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon,
according to some sources has made it clear that he would not
take such a view and that should he be attacked during another
war against Iraq he would retaliate. Can I ask you whether the
British Government has discussed any of this with the Israeli
Government and whether in your view or that of the British Government
the Israeli Government would retaliate? I should say that while
we were in Washington there were very mixed views about this.
Some thought that the Israelis would retaliate and would be right
to do so; others thought there was no chance of that happening.
(Mr Straw) I personally have not discussed this with
representatives of the Israeli Government. I have discussed it
with others. It is perfectly possible that British diplomats have
discussed it in Tel Aviv or it has been discussed at an official
level. The decisions that have to be made are ones made by the
Government of Israel. If Shimon Peres or the Defence Minister
were on the stand here he would give you the same answer as I
am about to give you, which is that I am not going to say any
more and it would depend on the circumstances at the time. Every
country has a right to act in self-defence under Article Fifty
One of the United Nations Charter. As I say, decisions which Israel
make will be a matter for Israel. Are we looking at possible consequences
of military action in the region? Yes, of course.
173. I would like to move on because I think
there is a very important question that we have touched on about
regime change. The Prime Minister on 24 September in the special
debate we had in the Commons said, "Iraq deserves to be led
by someone who can abide by international law, not a murderous
dictator . . .", a sentence which I think we would all agree
with. "We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people. Indeed,
liberated from Saddam, they could make Iraq prosperous and a force
for good in the middle east." The question is this: is our
Government currently working with exiled Iraqi groups to consider
the future of Iraq after Saddam Hussein?
(Mr Straw) To say we are working with exiled groups
would give a wrong impression. There have I think been talks at
official level with the Iraqi opposition groups which are based
here, which received information about their views, but to suggest
that we are working with them would be over-egging the situation.
174. But we have had contact with them?
(Mr Straw) Yes.
175. Can I move on and ask you about the consequences
of Saddam being removed from power for the country of Iraq itself?
We asked several people in Washington whether they believed that
the country would fragment. The general belief was that it would
not. What is the British Government's view about this?
(Mr Straw) I have talked a lot to people in the region
about this. It was part of the agenda when I visited four of the
countries in the region three weeks ago when I went to Cairo,
Oman, Kuwait and Teheran. It was a matter which I discussed this
morning when I met the Crown Prince of Bahrain here in London.
There is a wide measure of agreement by most of Saddam's neighbours
about what needs to be done, including, post-disarmament of Iraq,
for Iraq's territorial integrity to be maintained. There are points
of view about that and anxiety that no-one should take decisions
or actions which would destabilise those borders. The borders,
as you all know, were basically British inventions some 80 years
ago. They do not follow every natural geographic feature in the
region, it is all over the map, but they are the borders which
are now internationally accepted so it would be unwise to depart
from them. I think that there is such a common interest among
the states bordering Iraq that first of all it is improbable that
any of Iraq's neighbours would take any action to destabilise
and fragment Iraq and, secondly, that it has developed in the
last 80 years as a single entity, albeit with these three distinct
groups, the Kurds, the Shi-ites and the Sunnis, that with proper
support to a successor regime its territorial integrity would
be enhanced.
176. You mentioned earlier that you have been
to the region and have had discussions in several key capitals.
I think one of those, and perhaps one of the most important in
the region, is Iran. May I ask you what the Iranians' view was
about the possibility of military action against Iraq and whether
or not they would intervene?
(Mr Straw) Again, it is for them to say what their
views are rather than for me. However, you will know that Iran
suffered more at the hands of Saddam Hussein than any other country.
There are still every month one or two people dying from the effects
of the gases of what must be 15 years ago in Iran. There is very
considerable anxiety across Iran about Saddam Hussein and his
continuing to build up weapons of mass destruction, and certainly
a deep desire to see measures taken to ensure Iraq's compliance
with the United Nations Security Council resolutions.
177. I would like now to move on to the effect
of a war in Iraq and the broader struggle against al-Qaeda. Tony
Blair said on Australian television on 22 October, just last week:
"The purpose of terrorism is not just the act of destruction
itself, the purpose of terrorism is as its name applies—to
cause terror, to produce chaos, to produce division . . . that
is why the only way of dealing with it is for people to come together."
How do you think an attack on Iraq will affect the cohesion of
the international coalition against terrorism?
(Mr Straw) I think it will improve it, is the answer.
Military action against Iraq, as military action against anywhere
else, has to be justified and would have to be seen to be a last
resort. It comes back to the point I made much earlier, that it
is fanciful to suggest that any power is going to use military
force in a quixotic way and there is no evidence whatever that
the United States is intending to. Indeed, President Bush has
shown very great patience and caution and is concerned to ensure
that there is international legitimacy and support for all the
actions he is taking. If military action turns out to be necessary
and it is justified, as I say, as a last resort, then I think
that it could only indirectly assist the fight against terrorism
because it shows the resolve of the international community.
Mr Hamilton: You do not think that a war against
Iraq, even under the circumstances you describe, would fragment
and push away Arab Muslim countries?
Mr Mackinlay: And destabilise it?
Mr Hamilton
178. And destabilise it.
(Mr Straw) I personally doubt it. It is something
which I discussed in confidence with many of the leaders I met.
Of course, there always are, every day, people in the Arab world
who wish to stir up violence against the "infidel" West,
and we saw that most acutely with Osama Bin Laden. Those people
exist. I am afraid they are deeply evil people with a completely
perverted idea of humankind and of their own religion. I am afraid
to say it has got to a pass where it is only by military action
it is going to be possible to defeat them. The idea of dialogue
with these people seems to me to be entirely fanciful.
Mr Chidgey
179. Can I just carry on that line of questioning
with you, Foreign Secretary, if I may, because I think it is an
extremely serious part of this examination, particularly for the
longer term. From the evidence we have taken and the discussions
we have had with many people, both with people in Washington and
of course here, many experts are deeply concerned about what I
would call the "hijacking" of people's religious beliefs
to support international terrorism. The facts make quite frightening
reading. I am sure you are familiar with the RAND organisation
and you possibly know Bruce Hoffman, one of their terrorism experts,
who has produced information from his database to show that in
1996, the last time he had data available, the groups driven in
whole or in part by salient religious, theological motive committed
ten of the 13 most lethal terrorist attacks in that year. My point
is, linking with Mr Hamilton, that should we take military action
against Iraq, justified as you say, and should, for example, Al
Jazeera be putting television pictures around the Arab world of
massive Iraqi civilian casualties, is that not by definition going
to further encourage evil people like Osama Bin Laden to recruit
many thousands more people under the cloak of people's religious
beliefs in the provocation and expansion of international terrorism?
(Mr Straw) Mr Chidgey, if I may, I will just park
your "ifs". Of course, it is true that there will be
international terrorist organisations, particularly Islamic terrorist
organisations who claim Islam to themselves which seek to exploit
any situation where military action is taken against an Islamic
country. I have to say they sought to exploit, however, military
action being taken against the Taliban in Afghanistan in order
to free a Muslim country, as they did military action taken to
free another Muslim country, Kuwait, in 1991 and to free Muslims
in Kosovo in 1998. They will seize on all excuse or none, but
the question for us has to be is the military action justified
in this case? If it is justified, we will be able to justify it.
I have a very, very large Muslim population myself in my own constituency.
I remember the anxieties of people over Kosovo and even more so
in respect of Afghanistan. Those anxieties are not there now because
you can point to the fact that this military action not only was
justified at the time but palpably, in retrospect, has been justified
because we have freed Muslim people. What I also say to my Muslim
friends is look at the record of Saddam Hussein. It happens that
his is not a particularly devout regime so one should not think
they are all—
3 See Ev 70-71. Back
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