Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240 - 259)

TUESDAY 29 APRIL 2003

RT HON JACK STRAW MP, MR PETER RICKETTS CMG AND MR EDWARD OAKDEN CMG

  240. And guaranteed in any constitution that might be allowed?
  (Mr Straw) Yes.

  Mr Olner

  241. Foreign Secretary, you talked earlier this afternoon and in the House yesterday about the meeting that my dear colleague Mike O'Brien was attending yesterday in Baghdad. I wonder whether there is anything you can report back to us as to how that meeting went. I would be interested to hear what criteria are being used to identify this representative group of Iraqis.

  (Mr Straw) About 250 delegates attended, which is four times the number who attended the original meeting in Nasiriyah. They were generally regarded as second tier representatives because a deliberate decision was made by the US-UK to try and not have the conference dominated by "names", which could have led to separate stories and I think that was a wise move. It brought together a broader range of Iraqi participants including opposition exile groups and those who were newly liberated. It did not set up—there was suggestions that it might do but we certainly thought this would have been premature—an interim Iraqi authority, but it is part of a consultation process which will eventually lead to a Baghdad conference for the establishment of an IIA[3] about which I spoke in a major speech I gave a few weeks ago. That is where we are there. It was pretty broadly representative and there will be further meetings both at a national level but also at a local level. One of the things I am proud of is that it was the British forces in the Basra sector who got going the model of local consultations in Basra itself and townships which is a model which has been rolled out across the country.

  242. Is there any difference between the attitude of the Americans and ourselves as to who attends and who determines which groups of Iraqis are entitled to attend?

  (Mr Straw) There has not been that I have been aware of, no.

  243. On 28 April you said in the House that President Bush and the Prime Minister had made it clear that the United Nations will have a vital role in Iraq's reconstruction. Can you give us any suggestions, now that the war has finished, as to what that vital role is going to be and how it can be identified?
  (Mr Straw) Yes, of course. First of all, the United Nations is playing a central role in humanitarian relief and, as I told the House yesterday, their own office is about to declare the whole of Iraq south of Baghdad as permissive and that is the stage before they declare it completely safe as an area in which the United Nations, its agencies and NGOs can operate, but it is pretty safe now. The United Nations and the International Commission for the Red Cross and other organisations are very active in providing humanitarian assistance. The Oil for Food programme resolutions have been rolled over on two occasions now, what was Resolution 1472 and then last week 1476, so there has been a good process of consultation inside the Security Council and 1476 will expire on 3 June, so there will be discussions in the last couple of weeks of next month with a view to deciding what further regime there is for Oil for Food in the weeks and months after that. That is one area where the UN is already very actively involved. The Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has appointed a special adviser to him on Iraq and at the summit in Athens just under two weeks ago Kofi Annan had discussions with a number of Heads of Government including the British Prime Minister and with a group of five Foreign Ministers from the Security Council, Spain, Germany, France, UK, Bulgaria and, as it happened, Igor Ivanov from Russia, who was there for the consultation, about the future role of the UN. Other areas where the UN should be able to play an important role include support for the new governance of Iraq, working with the coalition in support of the Iraqi people. There are the issues I spelt out yesterday about the future of the sanctions policy which we will have to sort out and associated with that is Title II oil revenues, the recognition and protection of Iraq's territorial integrity and the role of the international financial institutions. So there is a wide range of subjects for the UN to be involved in. Precisely how the role develops does not just depend, however, on the view of the United States and the United Kingdom but on the other 13 members present in the Security Council and critically on the other three permanent members. If we are able to secure a co-operative and constructive environment within the Security Council then there will be one hopefully benign conclusion from the discussions. On the other hand, if we cannot then there will be another, but we hope very much for the former.

  Mr Hamilton

  244. Foreign Secretary, Sir Patrick made reference to the importance of different religious minorities including the Jews. I think there is probably about ten Jews left in Iraq, I know many who are in exile. There is a more important group than even the religious minorities that need to play a full part in the reconstruction of Iraq and any future government and that is its women. Colin Powell said on 14 April that meetings on Iraq's future will be a forum for all Iraqis. I understand that at yesterday's meeting there were very few women present and I believe there was one particular woman who wished to attend from this country who is an Iraqi refugee in Great Britain but who was, for whatever reason, not able to attend. I wonder if you could tell the Committee a little bit more about how the coalition intends to ensure, without imposing its will on who will or will not make up the future transitional government, women will play their full part in Iraq's future including those who are currently in exile in Great Britain?

  (Mr Straw) First of all, may I say that I am trying to find out what happened to prevent the attendance of this particular woman delegate. That point was raised with me in a phone call this morning by Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry who also has responsibility for women's policies. Secondly, we had Security Council Resolutions 1325 passed not so long ago which is a clear injunction on all Member States to ensure the full participation of women at all levels of government inside our own countries. That is an imperative for Iraqi people for the interim authority when it is formed as well as for the United States and United Kingdom. We are doing everything we can to work this in and will continue to do so. Even in this country some organisations are more successful than others in ensuring the proper representation of women within their organisations and even an organisation that I can think of which has been successful has only got 25% representation in Parliament, not the 50% we are looking for.

  245. That is better than 1%.
  (Mr Straw) Sure.

  246. I know how busy you are and I know that Patricia Hewitt is the Minister for Women. However, the questions posed on the radio this morning seemed to be more relevant to your role as Foreign Secretary and I wonder why you were unable to attend this interview on Radio 4 rather than Patricia Hewitt who seemed unable to answer the questions because they are more in your remit?
  (Mr Straw) I did not hear the interview. I am hardly slow in coming forward to do radio interviews.

  Sir Patrick Cormack

  247. The opposite perhaps.

  (Mr Straw) I cannot answer. Although I am busy, let me just say that I regard ensuring that there is a decent representation from women within any future government arrangements in Iraq as almost as important as the need to ensure a good balance between the different communities.

  Mr Hamilton: Thank you, that answers my question.

  Mr Maples

  248. Foreign Secretary, you have said that the looting was anticipated. Presumably the possible need for restoring water and power was anticipated as well. Was there a plan for dealing with these things?

  (Mr Straw) Yes, Mr Maples, but what I say is that these things were anticipated, for sure, but it is the nature of armed conflict that what happens does not follow a neat sequence and war is a disorderly process. That is just true and the only certainty about warfare is that the unexpected happens, and within a huge city like Baghdad, it is not possible to anticipate with precision where the problems will come from. Indeed the whole point about warfare is to be as unexpected as you can to the enemy, so it makes for difficulties for all sides.

  249. I accept that, but I am talking about what really happened in the last 20 days or so since Baghdad fell because I think it seems to many of us that whilst it was all planned and executed with quite an extraordinary degree of professionalism and whilst no doubt those commanders could not have anticipated what would happen, they could have anticipated what sort of resources would be needed, yet since the fall of Baghdad, and I do not know if water and electricity have been restored in Basra and Baghdad yet, but certainly until fairly recently there was no water in Basra or electricity in large parts of Baghdad. I would have thought it would be pretty easy to put some sort of security around key installations which we were going to need to use to run the country, some of the ministries and hospitals, and I wonder why it has taken General Garner at least two of those three weeks to get himself a plan. That is what I mean by a plan because if there was a plan, it is not obvious what it was.
  (Mr Straw) Yes, there was a plan and of course it was anticipated that we would need to get water and electricity running again. I may say that huge efforts were made by the coalition to avoid damage to these essential facilities and to the extent that they were taken out, I think future analysis will show that it was much more likely due to action by the Saddam regime than it was by the coalition. Because of the improvements in technology of aerial warfare, the targeting this time was much more accurate than it was in 1991 and in the targeting discussions in which I was involved over many months before the military action actually took place, we were down to the detail of, "Did you take out this particular electricity sub-station and what was attached to it?" and so on and very great care associated with that not only to minimise civilian deaths and casualties, but also to minimise the disruption to civilian life which would be caused by breaking up water or electricity supplies. In Basra which (a) is a smaller city than Baghdad and (b) we got to more quickly than the Americans got to Baghdad because it is closer to Kuwait, good progress has been made on the restoration of services, very good progress, and that is best illustrated by the fact that you are not seeing any stories on the television now suggesting the opposite. In addition to that, as I told the House yesterday, in some respects the position in that region is better than it was before the military action started. The waterway into Umm Qasr port is now being dredged to take larger-tonnage vessels than before and British military engineers have reopened the railway between Umm Qasr and Basra which had been lying unused for some time, indeed some years before the Saddam regime and they are intending to open the line from Basra to Baghdad.

  250. You have dealt with one or two aspects of it, but I would have thought that the specific case of early military security could have been put in around vital installations, and it does not seem that that happened, and the hospitals were allowed to be looted as well as important ministries. Why did Jay Garner take two weeks to get there?
  (Mr Straw) I think I have answered the question about the immediate problem of disorder and looting. It is a matter of regret. In a more perfect world there would have been a benign environment more quickly, but that was not the reality. There was simply a reality on the ground which had to be dealt with. It was not in anybody's interest, least of all the coalition forces', that there should have been that disorder, or that the museum should have been looted, that hospitals should have been attacked or that ministries should be left unguarded, but commanders on the ground had to make the decisions which they felt it necessary to make, both to secure, first of all, the safety of their own troops and then to ensure military success before they could then move on to do other, as it were, semi-civilian duties. As far as General Garner is concerned, I saw him in Kuwait two weeks ago yesterday. When I saw him it had been only five days after the fall of Baghdad the previous Wednesday. Actually that meeting I had with him had to be re-arranged and foreshortened because he was about to go to Nasiriyah where we had the first meeting, so he was already into Iraq, but he could not go as a civilian into Baghdad until he was confident that the premises they were going to open up in Baghdad were going to be safe, and not just safe from formal military action by the remnants of Iraqi forces, but also safe from guerilla warfare and so on, but he went as quickly as possible. In terms of other collapses of other regimes, I think the coalition has acted pretty speedily and I think in retrospect so it will be seen.

  Sir John Stanley

  251. Foreign Secretary, the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in his press conference on 25 April said, "We will not allow the Iraqi people's democratic transition to be hijacked by those who might wish to install another form of dictatorship", and that was widely interpreted as being an American statement of policy, that they would not allow the emergence of an Islamic state in Iraq. Is that the British Government's position?

  (Mr Straw) There is a very wide difference between a state which calls itself Islamic and a dictatorship, so our position is that we do not wish to see another dictatorship established for sure. The democratic state we do wish to see established because we believe, and I believe very strongly, that the idea of democracy is in the hearts, minds and souls of men and women of every religion across the world, that kind of state will certainly be one which has respect for its majority religion which is Islam. There are other countries around the world which call themselves Islamic, but where there are peaceful changes of government and democratic elections and we are seeing the emergence and development of such states as well. Sometimes it is a painful process, but you do see this and it is something that we have to encourage.

  252. Do you see a risk in Iraq now that what may emerge is a one-party state which may or may not be described as a dictatorship, but may be basically a single-party structure with no right of recourse to universal democratic elections?
  (Mr Straw) No, I do not and I think that the diversity of Iraq is such that that will be avoided. It is a diverse country. It is ethnically and religiously diverse and what we have to do is to nurture the development of a pluralist democracy, but one which, as I say, takes account of Iraq's own traditions and has respect for Iraq's dominant religion as well as allowing for religious worship by the minorities.

  253. Would you agree that if the pluralist democracy that you hope for and I am sure we all hope for does not emerge, the US and UK governments will have no ability for real to prevent an alternative form of government coming forward?
  (Mr Straw) What we have to do is to work on processes and institution-building which provide the circumstances in which democracy could operate. As I said earlier in answer to the Chairman, Iraqis are sophisticated people and they have quite an extensive middle class, a relatively good education system, a lot of very, very bright Iraqis outside Iraq who I think will go back to Iraq. For sure, there will be serious challenges ahead and it will be some time before you have a perfectly functioning democracy, just as it has been some time in other countries without Iraq's bloody history, but I am absolutely convinced that the future for Iraq and the Iraqis will be infinitely better than its recent past and also that if we in the international community work effectively hard and stay with the Iraqis, they will be able to rebuild institutions there and build new institutions as well.

  254. Could I turn to the role of your Department in Iraq now and its representation in Iraq. Foreign Secretary, did you give consideration to the question as to whether it might not be better for Mr Garner's British deputy, who is effectively the most senior British figure in Iraq at the present time, to be someone from your Department rather than being a serving officer? This is no personal reflection whatsoever on Major General Cross, but in presentational terms and in view of the major policy, diplomatic and essentially civilian issues which need to be carried forward, do you not consider that a member of your Department should not be Mr Garner's deputy?
  (Mr Straw) No, I think it is actually very sensible that in the immediate period post the military action, we should have had a senior serving military officer in that post. Why? Because what we are dealing with in the immediate period is the transition between the military environment and a civilian one and I happen to believe that the British military are very well equipped and experienced to deal with that kind of transition and to deal with a shift from high-intensity to low-intensity warfare and then to a paramilitary policing environment. Tim Cross, as I say, is experienced. I had very good conversations with him when I was in Kuwait a couple of weeks ago. I think he will do a very good job and he is supported by number of civilians, quite a number from my Department, from DFID[4] and from other departments as well. In the UK Government, we are able to work pretty seamlessly. I chair a Cabinet committee on Iraq looking at a wide range of issues and bringing government departments together. May I also, however, Mr Chairman, just say that we have had plans in hand to establish a British office, which will be the precursor to a British embassy in Baghdad. We have got the physical elements of that office in transportable form in Kuwait and we have got staff identified, so when we judge the security situation to be acceptable, this British office will move up to Baghdad and we will have obviously a larger and more substantial presence in Baghdad.

  255. Is Mr Edward Chaplin your senior man in Iraq at the moment?

  (Mr Straw) No. I think, with a bit of luck, Mr Chaplin is in the office.

  256. I hear you say that, but you referred to him being present at the meeting.
  (Mr Straw) He was present at the Nasiriyah meeting two weeks ago. At yesterday's meeting there was Mike O'Brien, our parliamentary colleague, one of the Foreign Office ministers, and Dominic Chilcot, who has been running the Iraq planning unit as well as Mr Chaplin.

  257. I think what the Committee wants to know is what steps you are taking to get the requisite diplomatic personnel with the requisite seniority in place and hopefully playing a very influential role in what is emerging in Iraq, not just leaving the field clear to our US friends.
  (Mr Straw) We are working very collaboratively with our US friends and we have been right from the start of this. We have a number of Foreign Office, DFID and other British Government department staff working inside ORHA[5] itself, the organisation headed up by Jay Garner. Some of those are now in Baghdad in the ORHA office. I met most of the British contingent when I was in Kuwait two weeks ago, so they are there anyway. Then separately there are advanced plans for us to establish a British office to represent the United Kingdom and the British Government in Baghdad as a nucleus of a British embassy once there is an Iraqi Government to which this embassy could be accredited.

  258. But do you not feel you should have a senior British diplomatic official as your man in Iraq now? These are crucial moments surely.

  (Mr Straw) We do have senior people in Iraq now.

  259. Who is your key person?
  (Mr Straw) As I say, Dominic Chilcot is there. We have got people who are ready to go to form the nucleus of a British office. If you are asking me whether I am satisfied with the degree of representation of the United Kingdom in Iraq as well as in Qatar and Kuwait, the answer to that is yes.

  Sir Patrick Cormack


3   Iraqi Interim Authority. Back

4   Department for International Development. Back

5   Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Back


 
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