Memorandum from Shelagh Simmons
FOREIGN POLICY ASPECTS OF THE WAR AGAINST
TERRORISM INQUIRY
1. As a British citizen and member of the
voting public, I have a number of concerns about the preamble
to war in Iraq. Some of them are already the subject of your Inquiry.
2. However, there is a another issue I also
wish to raise, which I hope falls within your remit. It is the
matter of the failure to obtain a further United Nations resolution
authorising war.
3. The Prime Minister gave explicit guarantees
that he would not involve the UK in military action without such
a resolution, yet proceeded to do so. The reason given was that
French intransigence had made such a resolution impossible. We
were told France had said she would use her veto "whatever
the circumstances".
4. My understanding is that is simply untrue.
France did not rule out the use of military action altogether.
But she did rule it out at a time when the inspections process
appeared to be yielding some results, and on that basis said she
would veto any resolution that would automatically lead to war
at that stage (as did other Permanent Members of the Security
Council). However, that very important distinction was never made
by the Prime Minister and other cabinet members, and this distortion
of the French position was responsible for persuading those MPs
to support the Government who had previously said they would not
vote for war without a further resolution.
5. Indeed, according to Clare Short, one
of her reasons for staying in the Cabinet was that the Prime Minister
had told her "the French veto for the Chilean compromise
had made a second resolution impossible". Again, this was
untrue. In fact the United States rejected the Chilean proposal,
a fact confirmed by the Chilean Ambassador to the UN in a recent
television interview in which he expressed his shock that the
US had dismissed it out of hand within 20 minutes of its appearance.
I wrote to Ms Short pointing this out, and she replied that she
had looked further into the matter and "you are right that
the US rubbished the Chilean compromise when it appeared".
She has since said that on checking the transcript of President
Chirac's speech, she now accepts that the Government did indeed
misrepresent France's position.
6. This misrepresentation was perpetuated
by Tony Blair, John Prescott, Jack Straw, David Blunkett, John
Reid, Peter Hain and Peter Mandelson, who seemed to embark on
a mission to discredit the French in an attempt to divert attention
away from the failure to get support at the UN.
7. I might also add that the Foreign Secretary's
statement to the Committee on 29 April 2003 that WMD will take
time to find in "a country twice the size of France"
(a claim he also made in a subsequent radio interview) does not
inspire me with any confidence that the Government is not prone
to exaggeration since Iraq is in fact substantially smaller than
France and is more comparable in size with Sweden!
8. For reasons which I do not understand,
there appears to have been a real sense of desperation in the
British Government's drive to war, and the "spin" surrounding
events at the UN seems to have been part of it. I have tried to
get explanations from all those I mentioned above, but regret
they have either not answered my letters or their staff have sent
standard acknowledgements which do not address my concerns. I
therefore hope you may have more success.
Shelagh Simmons
June 2003
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