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CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 441-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
FOREIGN POLICY ASPECTS OF THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM
Thursday 11 March 2004 SIR JEREMY GREENSTOCK GCMG Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 26 Oral Evidence Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday 11 March 2004 Members present Mr Fabian Hamilton Mr Eric Illsley Andrew Mackinlay Mr Bill Olner Richard Ottaway Sir John Stanley Ms Gisela Stuart
In the absence of the Chairman, Sir John Stanley was called to the Chair.
________________ Witness: Sir Jeremy Greenstock GCMG, UK's Special Representative for Iraq, examined. Q1 Sir John Stanley: Sir Jeremy Greenstock, thank you very much indeed for coming before the Committee today. As you know, our Chairman, Donald Anderson, has to be away with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly today and has asked me to take the chair. We are delighted that you can give formal oral evidence to our Committee at this very important time when the Transitional Law has just been signed. Can I start by asking you if you can clarify one very crucial point which seems to be somewhat unclear from the wording of the Transitional Law, and that is what is the precise process by which the interim government is going to be chosen, selected, or is going to emerge by 1 July? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Thank you, Sir John, it is a great pleasure to be back with the Committee. The Transitional Law is specific in its terms about the structures for the transitional government in phase two of the transition period. The terminology is that the interim government will look after phase one between the end of June and at the latest the end of January, by which time elections should have been held, and phase two is the transitional government after those elections up to the end of 2005 on the current timetable. Q2 Sir John Stanley: My question addressed the interim government from 1 July. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, quite. The Transitional Administrative Law does not deal with the structures for the interim government but it forecasts that they will be dealt with in an annex to the law which is still to be negotiated and written. In practice now that the structures are clear for the overall transition period, including the structures for government in the second phase, the Coalition Provisional Authority is in a position to negotiate the precise structures and power-sharing in the first phase. It may seem chronologically illogical but it is politically logical to do it in that order because the interim government which has a period of seven months within which the most important event is the holding of elections in Iraq, needs to know what it is leading up to before Iraqis decide how they want to organise themselves for that interim period. So the administrator in Iraq, Ambassador Paul Bremer, will start a round of consultations within the Governing Council and elsewhere in Iraq because this has to be a consultative process amongst Iraqis for the structures and the disposition of personalities around the interim government over the coming weeks, and I think he expects to complete that process some time during the course of April. Q3 Sir John Stanley: But it is the case, is it not, that the annex is going to have to be agreed by the Interim Council and do you judge there could be a risk of a deadlock over the terms of the annex, which is going to be absolutely crucial in determining the membership of the interim government and in those circumstances is there any risk that there may be slippage on the 1 July date? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Those are two different questions, Sir John. I believe that there will be no slippage on the date for handover of full authority to a sovereign Iraqi government. Who knows whether there may or may not be deadlock at least for a time on the negotiations as to who should form the government that comes into being on that date? But I am encouraged by the fact that the Transitional Administrative Law was agreed by unanimity in quite difficult circumstances in the rebuilding of Iraq from scratch after the post‑combat period, and I am also encouraged by the spirit of the inter‑community fraternity within the Iraqi Governing Council which led to agreement on the Transitional Law. It surprised us in the CPA, given the difficulty of the substance with which we were dealing, that there was this unanimity, on the timing that we had forecast under the 15 November agreement, and that the spirit of debate between very different members of the Iraqi political community was quite as warm and open as it was. So if we could manage to regenerate that spirit when it comes to power sharing I hope that even if there is hard debate, at the end we will avoid deadlock. Sir John Stanley: Thank you. We have got further questions on the move towards the interim government. Mr Hamilton? Q4 Mr Hamilton: May I ask you, Sir Jeremy, whether there will be a role for the United Nations in the discussions over the formation of a transitional government in Iraq? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The United States and United Kingdom Governments are very open to a role for the United Nations and indeed have invited that, from their own positions of joint legal responsibility for the occupation period. Whether the United Nations is in a position to play that role to a large extent depends on whether the United Nations can organise its own affairs within Iraq, find secure accommodation and working arrangements for their team in Iraq, and whether they can respond to a willingness on the side of the Iraqi Governing Council and Iraqis generally that there should be a role for the United Nations. From the point of view of the CPA and of London and Washington there is every reason why we would like to have the United Nations involved in this process from now on. Q5 Mr Hamilton: Sir Jeremy, we have heard quite a lot in the media about the role of Ayatollah Sistani and I wonder whether he has any particular preferred option. It seems he has I would not say a veto but it seems that he has an enormous amount of influence given his role. Does he have any preferred option for the form the transitional government will take? Does the Coalition Provisional Authority or the United Kingdom Government have any particular views about this? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I do not know whether Ayatollah Sistani has developed his views beyond the public statements that we have heard from him over recent weeks and months. He has made it very clear that he is a religious authority in Iraq but not a political one and therefore the statements that he has made in public and as far as have been reported to us in private-because the CPA has no direct dealings with him, at Ayatollah Sistani's choice-and what we have heard him say is that the most important thing for Iraq over this coming period is elections. He believes that the important decisions about the future of Iraq should be taken by elected Iraqis and that he would like the interim period not to take decisions about the future of Iraq that will bind an elected authority in the future. From that I think you can deduce validly that Ayatollah Sistani would not want an interim government to be unconstrained in its activity and in its political decision‑making and that one of its main roles should be to prepare for elections as soon as possible and to hand over to an elected authority. The second part of your question is about the CPA's own view of these things. Our first point is that we wish Iraqis to take the decisions which are necessary for these coming stages. The CPA has authority and responsibility for the period up to the end of the occupation at the end of June and we will make sure that the decisions that have to be taken within that period are as orderly as possible and as sensible as possible for the future of Iraq and for the feelings, as we understand them, of the Iraqi people, whom we are consulting in various indirect ways. I believe as a matter of my own observation and judgment that the Iraq Governing Council and Iraqis more generally will be satisfied to see a structure of government in the interim period which reflects the structures of the executive for the transitional period to follow it, which is a Presidency Council of three, an executive Prime Minister, who is chief executive officer, if you like, of the Iraqi state, and a Cabinet of ministers and of ministries that looks quite similar to what we have at the moment. I think that is generally agreed among those who are approaching discussions on this matter. The one point that still needs to be resolved, I believe, and needs further discussion, is whether there should be a kind of legislature during the interim period which would probably be, if it came into being, much smaller than the 275‑person National Assembly in the transitional period. It could take the form of something that has been quite common in Arab world history, which is of a consultative council, a Majlis al-Shura in Arabic, which might be of several dozen people-that is more than the current governing council-and which would have certain limited functions to pass legislation in respect of the elections coming up, because there is no electoral law or other arrangements at the moment in respect of any necessary legislation for the administration of Iraq in that period. And it would otherwise be to some extent a check and a balance on the executive and would be a forum for public debate to get Iraqis used to the whole business of public democratic politics. All of those functions in the CPA's view would be a good use of such a Majlis but in the end it would be for Iraqis to decide whether they want that or not. Q6 Ms Stuart: I think the actual document of the Interim Constitution is a very impressive document and certainly when you very kindly saw us in Baghdad we had the impression that everyone is pulling together, but I wonder are there any mechanisms in the document to entrench some principles like the rule of law and the right of representation which a subsequent government would actually have to abide by? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes there are some within the transitional period. The Law of Administration of Iraq in the Transitional Period, which is its full Arabic name, can only be binding as law until the end of the transition period and it specifies its own fading from life, as it were, at the end of that period. Some elements of the law are amendable by arrangements within the law, which are primarily a three‑fourths majority vote in the transitional assembly for amendment of the law. Exempt from that are the time deadlines for the law and for its end of life and the chapter on the rights of the Iraqi communities to which you have just made reference. So if this law is upheld by the Iraqi state, which it should be as law, the Bill of Rights, as it is sometimes informally known as in chapter 2 of law, will be unamendable until the end of the period. Since it has been widely praised, particularly by those who are watching very closely the development of human and individual rights in Iraq, as a good piece of legislation, we hope very much that the law will be respected in all these respects. Q7 Ms Stuart: Just one small additional question following on Mr Hamilton's point about the role which Sistani is playing. Historically has he been quite clear that he sees himself as a religious rather than a political leader or is that an unusual stance he is taking now? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The history to which your adverb refers only goes back to 9 April because he had no role in the politics of the Saddam regime and he is clearly, and by his own admission, a powerful religious authority but not a political one. However, this is an unusual period of the reforming from scratch, if you like, of a new Iraq and there is, to some extent, outside the Governing Council a political vacuum. His religious pronouncements have had political effect partly as a result of that vacuum as Iraqis begin to take decisions about their own future, and not all Iraqis want to listen just to the Coalition Provisional Authority for understandable reasons, so his religious pronouncements have had political effect. But he has made it quite clear in public and in private that he does not wish to play a political or executive role. You have to judge by what he says and by the unstated effects of what he says and perhaps come to your own conclusions about what is happening. Q8 Andrew Mackinlay: I would like to go on to some of the issues in respect of the post 1 July status of the British and Coalition forces and administration. Can I just clear up one thing? Speed reading this new law, in the governorate councils, which I take to be like the legislative assembly of the regions, there is also a man or a woman called a governor and it is not clear from where he or she derives their authority. I can see they cannot be removed and I assume they are going to be pretty powerful and fulfil the traditional role of a governor as, say, in the United States. What is their status? Do you know? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: What we call normally the provincial councils in the governorate (sometimes called governorate councils) have a role roughly analogous to a county council in the United Kingdom. That is, they are partly legislative in local terms and partly executive. The governor in some provinces-and they have a choice about this-can be the chairman of the provincial council or it may be that they appoint a chairman who is separate from the governor. That depends upon the province concerned. The status of the governor and these councils has mainly been one of consultative selection but some of them have had elections and in all of them (Kurdistan is rather different but we are talking about the 15 southern governorates) the CPA has taken care to consult the public through the provincial councils and make sure that the governor represents a wide swathe of opinion, sometimes through elections which have been quite fairly held in some provinces, sometimes through a process of consultation or of administrative judgment that the governor represents a wide swathe of the people. The CPA has conducted in some provinces a process that has been called "refreshment" where governors who were unpopular or unrepresentative have been changed to ones who are more so through a consultative process. Q9 Andrew Mackinlay: I am obliged. On 1 July sovereignty is handed over to the Provisional Iraqi Government, although the sovereignty already exists. My colleague and I ascertained when we visited you and your colleagues a fortnight ago that there is not going to be a military agreement between the Iraqi government and Coalition forces until after 1 July. Not only does that concern me but can I put a practical point to you: what would be the legal status of United Kingdom service personnel, particularly what would be the rules of engagement, and, thirdly, and not unimportantly, there are an awful lot of British people in private security companies employed by the Coalition and United Kingdom Government. It seems to me their status is ambiguous and they would need the protection of the law. Whose law do they come under and what are the rules of engagement? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Some decisions still need to be taken in the area of security co‑operation with the United States, but the process is likely to be something along the following lines. The Iraqi Governing Council will make it clear beyond the terms of the law itself, although the law goes some way to pronouncing on this subject, that multi‑national forces are welcome in the period following the end of the occupation and the transfer of full authority back to a sovereign Iraqi state. (In parenthesis, Mr Mackinlay, we are not transferring sovereignty because the Iraqis already have that sovereignty, we are transferring full authority back to a sovereign state.) We expect that invitation from this Iraqi Governing Council, however it is expressed, to be the forerunner to a new Security Council Resolution which will confirm the current arrangements for the multi‑national force under Resolution 1511 and, we hope, extend them into the interim period under the Iraqi interim government. Under those arrangements, if they are satisfactory, there will be no need for any further agreement with the interim government if the Security Council Resolution is satisfactory in all respects. If there is a need for further understandings with the incoming government as to privileges and immunities and movement and access and other matters, if they are not covered by the Resolution, there is nothing in this law that precludes troop contributors having their own arrangements with the incoming government, but the Law expects in Article 59C that it will be the transitional government after elections in early 2005 that will make any adjustments to security co‑operation agreements. As for rules of engagement they will be a matter for each contingent under its own arrangements, provided they fall within the Security Council Resolution's terms, and provided they are compatible with the general performance and status of other contributing forces, so that there are not great differences between different forces. Andrew Mackinlay: I am obliged. Q10 Andrew Mackinlay: Understandably, a lot of the parties had historically and for their own protection paramilitaries. Has that been tackled to either bring those troops into a national army or to disengage them? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, it is being tackled. The Law makes it quite clear that militias and other armed groups may not continue outside the structures of the state's armed forces and we have an implementation mechanism in place for pursuing that. I did not answer your question, Mr Mackinlay, about private security companies. So long as they obey the law of the land and follow normal practice then there is no reason why individuals or companies should not engage them so long as the Iraqi state allows the practice of private security companies. Sir John Stanley: Sir Jeremy, we are going to cover what is going to happen to the present Governing Council and then we want to go on to looking at the position of protection of the minority groups. First of all, Mr Illsley and then he will be followed by Mr Olner. Q11 Mr Illsley: Sir Jeremy, the legal framework for the Iraqi Special Tribunal is now in place and even though it has not actually been formulated as yet, there are already suggestions that perhaps the Tribunal does not have legitimacy and that it might not have the capacity to be able to deal with the numbers of cases it is likely to face. First of all, will the Tribunal be up and running by 1 July of this year? Secondly, are you satisfied that it will have legitimacy, given that it is being formulated during the period of occupation rather than the period after the handover on 1 July? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The Tribunal is going to handle a number of quite complicated cases and having been set up only as recently as 10 December by a statute of the Governing Council signed by the administrator, it is now working on setting up the arrangements for the Tribunal-its housing, its court process, its prosecution service. It has not yet appointed all the people for these various areas. It has not yet appointed an administrator for the Tribunal. The Governing Council has been involved in other urgent business and they have not proceeded with setting up the necessary structures for the Tribunal as quickly as we would have wished. I therefore doubt that it will be fully ready to go by 1 July, but there is no reason why its work should not accelerate from now on and thereafter. I think it is extremely unlikely there will be any cases tried before the Tribunal in the period we are talking about for the reasons I have given you. It is also quite clear that given the nature of the people they will be indicting and trying, that the collection and analysis and sifting of evidence is going to be quite a complex business. So I think that even an international court like the Yugoslav one in The Hague, which has taken its time to get through a number of cases, would have found it quite a complex business to get about the indictment and prosecution of senior targets in the Iraqi system, so do not expect early movement in that respect is my advice. As for its legitimacy it is as legitimate as anything else that comes out of the occupation. The Iraqi Governing Council embodies the sovereignty of the Iraqi state under Security Council Resolution 1511. The international response to what we are doing in this period for Iraq has been very positive so it is certainly a legal structure under the terms of the occupation and its political legitimacy remains to be judged as matters of political legitimacy always do. We have had quite a good response to the setting up of the Tribunal in the terms that you are referring to but many observers have wished that there might have been greater international consultation in its establishment, and the UN has made that comment privately and publicly. They are now beginning to produce rules of procedure for the Tribunal which will be very important for its correct handling, and the production of those rules of procedure are taking into account international norms in these areas, and I hope they will be compelling and valid procedures for such a court. Q12 Mr Illsley: I think that probably answers my next question which would have been is there going to be input into the work of the Tribunal by international experts? From what you are saying that looks likely to be the case. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I think the advice of international lawyers and experienced people in these areas is being sought as part of the drawing up of the rules of procedure. I hope that that process will be satisfactory to everybody. Q13 Mr Illsley: Final two questions. First, is the Tribunal designed to look at all cases which are likely to be brought up in Iraq or is it simply going to be high-profile cases, obviously Saddam and the more senior representatives? Second, if it looks as though the Tribunal is likely to lead to the imposition of the death penalty, is that likely to lessen the international support for it? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The Tribunal is designed to look after high-profile cases. The Iraqi court system and judiciary generally have been developed quite well as an independent judiciary since the occupation began and is capable of handling more ordinary court cases. People who have committed-and I apologise for the phrase-"normal" murder and other crimes in the previous period will probably be indicted under that process. It will be the higher profile targets that will be taken up by the Tribunal. As for the death penalty, yes, we expect the Iraqi state, from what we have heard so far of people's views, to institute the death penalty as part of their judicial process. Mainly as a result of the UK's intervention the death penalty itself has been suspended during the occupation period because we will not support a judicial process under our legal obligations internationally and nationally with a death penalty, but once the occupation is over our influence will be less in that respect and there may be some areas-this is for ministers to judge-where we will not be fully supportive of a system that has the death penalty as part of its structure. This may also affect other members of the European Union who share our views on the death penalty and other parts of the international system, and probably governments and national systems will take their views accordingly as to whether they view the death penalty as acceptable or not, so there will probably be a diminution of widespread international support for that reason. Sir John Stanley: Turning to the need to protect the interests of the various groups in Iraq, Mr Olner and then Mr Ottaway. Q14 Mr Olner: I wanted to talk, Sir Jeremy, about the inclusiveness of the various political parties or the various groups in Iraq who make up the political process. We had some representatives from the Turcoman community over in the UK, I think, at the back end of last week and they represent 13 per cent (their figures) of people in Iraq and they were very concerned that they had no part in this new Governing Council. I am just wondering whether the thing has been shared out correctly so that as many facets of Iraqi life as possible can be represented on the Governing Council? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The Governing Council by its own admission does not represent every faction and every community or sub-community in Iraq, it is only 25 people, and the intention last July was to get an Iraqi administration going from embryo to infancy and through to adolescence during the occupation period as best we could in quite disturbed circumstances. I think that the international and national response within Iraq and outside to the work of the Governing Council has been quite positive, but there is no doubt that some parts of the Iraqi community do not feel properly represented by the Governing Council. The CPA intends to encourage the Iraqi system to bring in an interim government structure that is more representative than the Governing Council. If there is a Majlis al-Shura, for instance, we would like that consultative body to bring in representatives of communities who feel under‑represented. That would include some parts of the Sunni community who are asking for greater representation, some of the larger tribes, some parts of the Turcoman community who feel under‑represented, some parts of the Kurdish community who see the PUC[1] and KDP[2] as being only partly representative of the Kurdish nation, and indeed probably some parts of the Shia religious and secular communities who feel under‑represented. On the other hand, what has struck us as we go about our business in Iraq over the months of this authority period is that there is no political platform out there which has formed in opposition to what we are doing and which seems to represent anything that we missed. So the reason why we may not through the Governing Council have instituted a fully representational system is that the communities that we are talking about have not organised themselves sufficiently to produce representatives and we have encouraged them to redress that balance in the weeks up to 30 June. Q15 Mr Olner: That point, Sir John, leads me into the next part of my question. I believe that what has happened in Iraq is that we will hear, sadly, all the bad news, and we never hear of the good news, and colleagues who have visited and you yourself, Sir Jeremy, in what you have told us have said that there are some good stories to be told about Iraq as well. I just wonder because it is still a violent place whether groups in the community are being frightened away from taking part in the political process because of the violence that does occur there? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Obviously there is a small minority of people who have neutrally but silently supported that violence or have taken part in it themselves, but our understanding is that the vast majority of Iraqis want to be represented in a fully democratic system and their complaints have been they do not see their own representatives in that system, and you can see that because there are only 25 people there for a country of 25 million and one per million is not a representative enough structure, so we will seek to redress that in our discussions with Iraqis about bringing in the interim government and we think it is an important thing to be addressing. Q16 Richard Ottaway: Sir Jeremy, following on from my colleague's questioning, the groups you are talking about are to a degree organised by sect and ethnicity. We heard about the Shia majority and the Sunni minority, yet looking at the Interim Constitution, as you are well aware, it specifically excludes a system of government based on ethnicity or sect. How are you going to reconcile the desire of these groups to be organised in a way that represents their community and a Constitution that will not recognise that? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Through encouraging the orthodox activity of political parties is my answer to that, and some of them are beginning to operate in this way across community boundaries. The fact is that in a period of uncertainty and high disturbance, as for instance we have witnessed in the Balkans over the years, people first of all identify with their own communities as a matter of immediate security and that seems to be the response to a high degree of insecurity. But as security improves people begin to think more about orthodox political platforms and what they believe in by way of a political approach, and some of the parties already formed are beginning to look for constituencies outside the community of their political leadership. For instance, the Iraqi National Congress under Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Accord under Iyad Allawi are both seeking broader constituencies in the Sunni and Kurd constituencies, although both those gentlemen are what you would call secular Shia in the Iraqi community. The Kurds are very Kurdish in their political approach but the Kurdish leadership are beginning to build bridges between Kurdish politics and other parts of the Sunni and Shia communities in Iraq. I think you will find that as the elections roll forward and as people begin to understand what is needed to succeed in a political campaign, platforms will form which do not just appeal to single ethnic or religious communities, but there will be coalescences of smaller parties in an attempt to get majority appeal within the electorate as a whole. In that way it may take more time than just the eight or nine months we are going to have before an election in early 2005 or at the end of 2004. But this is my answer to your question: getting away from reactive community responses will best be done through orthodox political activity and greater security in Iraq and we must try and foster both things as we continue to work in partnership with a sovereign Iraqi state. Richard Ottaway: I wish you well. Q17 Sir John Stanley: Just one final question in this particular area. When we reach the position of getting to the transitional period, the top executive government body will be the Presidency Council which will be a triumvirate according to the Transitional Law which is going to be elected en bloc by the National Assembly. Is it the unspoken intention that these three individuals will be one from the Shia community, one from the Sunni community and one from the Kurdish community or not? Is there a risk that all of these three individuals en bloc might come simultaneously from the Shia community? If so, how do you judge the impact of that on the Sunni community and Kurdish community should that happen? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Perhaps I should comment that the Presidency Council will have very few executive powers. The head of the executive will be the Prime Minister who will be a single individual and who will preside over a cabinet of ministers. The political powers in the executive sense of the Presidency will be quite limited. It will be more representational and functional in terms of guardianship of the constitutional principles under which the transition is working. If I said that it was going to be a deal between the three main communities the principle would cease to be unspoken, so I have to be careful. But I think there is an understanding that coalition politics will extend into the interim and transitional periods and that that is the way that the minds of many senior Iraqi politicians are moving. Sir John Stanley: Thank you. If we could turn now to the UK's presence after 1 July. Mr Mackinlay? Q18 Andrew Mackinlay: I am interested to know what sort of relationship we will have and what preparations we have got for representation both in Baghdad and consulates elsewhere like Basra but also, if I could scoop this up, you and some of your colleagues have avoided other callings which you could legitimately have taken up because you have dedicated yourselves to the future of Iraq and this region, but it did strike me there is going to be a big void of British personnel and indeed personnel from other Coalition countries on 1 July so there may be a hiatus of people like yourself with experience who have grown up with this issue. I do not know if you could cover that as well. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The intention for the transition into the sovereign period, as I understand the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's intention, is that there should be an orthodox, if quite large, embassy which will have a direct relationship with the Iraqi state; that the Americans and other coalition partners will do the same; and that therefore the form of our presence in Iraq will change quite radically from the Coalition occupation period. We are already talking with our American and other partners about having very strong co‑ordination mechanisms so that the support we give to the Iraqi state in security terms, in financial assistance, in economic work, in political support for the ministries, et cetera, will flow (we hope) as seamlessly as possible from what we are doing in the Coalition period. So although the front of shop may look different, what is happening behind will be very co‑ordinated, very supportive of the Iraqi state and will be a partnership with Iraq which will seek to produce the same effect of international assistance as now-with the added help of the United Nations, international financial institutions, the European Union and others who are not present at this moment. As for the experience of individuals, I do not think we need think that it depends tremendously on particular individuals. The person who is to succeed me at the end of this month as Special Representative for the UK in Iraq knows a lot more about Iraq than I did. I had never set foot in the place before 11 September last year, so experience is relative, and David Richmond, who served in Iraq in the late 1970s/early 1980s, has long experience of the Arab world and, having had this experience in Iraq working with the CPA, is highly qualified to take over. Thereafter, as I understand it, the British Government intends to appoint a senior ambassador with Arab world experience so I hope you will not notice that those who have been handling it in the past have gone. The expertise will still be there. You mentioned also consular arrangements outside Baghdad. We intend to have an office in Basra where British input has been high-profile over this last period. There will continue to be whatever number of British troops ministers decide in the Division in the South East and I think you will find that the British presence in the South East will continue to be quite considerable. The other element of continuity is that a number of people serving with the CPA and in Basra and in my office at present will continue on into the embassy so that a number of individuals at all levels will carry on the experience of the present stage. Andrew Mackinlay: Forgive me if you have covered it, I may have missed it, but on 1 July there may still be in British custody some people who committed their offences after... Sir John Stanley: Mr Mackinlay, we are going to turn to that and Mr Olner is going to lead on that issue. Mr Olner? Q19 Mr Olner: Perhaps I could wrap all of my questions in one really. You mentioned about the politics of the Coalition. One of the problems we have now is that we have 13,000 people who are detained in Iraq, some of those for criminal reasons, others, I assume, that the Coalition have arrested for various other activities, terrorist activities. Do you think that number is going to grow significantly before 30 June? What will happen to them on 1 July? What provision is being made now to review the position of these detainees. More importantly, who will oversee this on 1 July? Is the Coalition just going to walk away and say, "It is nothing to do with us; it is you now"? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: A lot of work is going into looking after detainees and into the future of detainees. It is true that the numbers are quite high because a lot of people have needed to be picked up for security reasons and investigated because of prima facie evidence that they have been involved in insurgency and terrorist activity. The Coalition forces, who are responsible for those detainees and therefore outside my own area of direct responsibility, have been taking measures to process detainees much more quickly. There is now a much more efficient database of who these people are. Their families, tribes and other people responsible for them are being informed much more quickly that they are being held. Opportunities for them to be visited have been increased and opportunities for them to be released if charges are not to be laid have been taken forward and 700 have already been released under these procedures. We are also trying to distinguish between those who need to be kept for security reasons under the occupation and those who should be transferred back into the Iraqi criminal justice, the civilian system, to be dealt with in that system, whose competence and ability to handle quite a high number of cases has increased quite a lot in recent months. Q20 Mr Olner: This might be minute detail. I have no record of how many detainees are being held, say, in the Baghdad area, which is being policed by and large by the Americans, and how many detainees are being held in the Basra area where we as the UK perhaps hold ultimate responsibility. Is there a significant difference between the detainees we oversee and the ones the Americans do? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Not in terms of procedure and law. There are much higher numbers in the central area than the Basra area. In Basra, as I remember, but one of my colleagues may be able to inform you, the number of detainees is in the very low hundreds, maybe a hundred and something. The number in the American area, many of them held at Abu-Ghraib Prison, are in five figures, about 10,000. The prisoners come from various categories. There are prisoners of war from the conflict period, there are security detainees from the period since the beginning of the occupation, and there are straightforward criminals who need to be transferred back into the criminal justice system. The Americans are trying to sort out these categories much more quickly. What will happen on 1 July to some extent still has to be decided. Those who can be handed over to the Iraqi system will be handed over but many of the security detainees may continue to be held by the Americans if the Americans, in partnership with the Iraqis and with their approval, continue to take a lead in overall security control of Iraq. Some of these things still need to be arranged. Q21 Andrew Mackinlay: Can we assume that there will be no people in the custody of the United Kingdom on 2 July? If there is the question we cannot avoid is from where will we derive our authority for holding them? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Ministers have to make some decisions in this area, but one forward option which is quite likely to be followed is that with the end of the occupation we hand over our detainees to the Iraqi system. It may be that we still have some prisoners whom we regard as prisoners of war from the conflict and we may have to make special arrangements for their return or handing over or for their retention for a while, but we will consult the Iraqi system and the International Committee of the Red Cross in making our decisions on these people. Those that we can hand to the orthodox criminal justice system we will do so, so on the whole our intention is to divest ourselves of any responsibility for detainees from the conflict or the occupation period. Sir John Stanley: We turn now to the security position which clearly remains very worrying in parts of Iraq at any rate. Q22 Mr Hamilton: Sir Jeremy, last September the Foreign Affairs Committee visited the Middle East and while we were in Amman we met a young British woman who had spent some time in Baghdad setting up an Arab/British language newspaper. The stories she told us were rather different to what we see regularly on the news. Of course we see the atrocities that are committed regularly in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, but when I met this woman in January she told us that now it is possible for a European woman to walk around at least Baghdad without wearing traditional costume and wearing European clothes. She seemed to imply that normality had returned. What is your comment on that view? Is it very different in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq to what we see on the news channels regularly or are the atrocities keeping any semblance of normal life away? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: There is absolutely no doubt that it is a mixed picture and therefore journalists representing that picture can be selective if they wish. The state of community security in terms of law and order and normal life differs between different parts of the country. I would say that in the South and the North the conditions are much more normal, by whatever standards you choose to describe normality in the Iraq we have watched over the last several decades, in the kind of life they would like to lead. The conditions in and around the South East, in Kurdistan, in some parts of Baghdad and in some parts of the countryside away from the main towns (where there have been difficulties) are quite normal. The markets are operating normally. Commodities can be bought and sold in the normal way of a market. An enormous number of goods have come into the country and are being sold and used. There is new agricultural activity after quite a good winter of rains and large volumes of seeds and other agricultural materials have come in and are under demand. However, in certain other areas, particularly where there is room for terrorism and insurgency to breathe because of the resentments within that community about what has happened and about the occupation, there are quite regular security incidents. Over and above all of that, given the type of cynical, brutal terrorism that we have been experiencing of large bombings being used against soft targets, nobody can feel absolutely safe anywhere where those people can move, and we saw that in the religious observances of 2 March and how brutal these people can be in a normal religious crowd. There is always that feeling in people's minds, "Am I in a safe area or am I not? Might there be terrorists around or people willing to hit soft targets around?", but then you get on with life and put it in the back of your mind, and I think your woman friend is right, that most areas of Iraq are now seeing a much more normal life than under Saddam and than under the early weeks of the occupation period. Q23 Mr Hamilton: Who do you think are responsible for some of the atrocities, especially that committed in Karbala last week, and have any of these groups been affected by the arrest of Saddam? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The former regime loyalists, the Saddamists if you like, have been affected, not just because he was taken into custody but also because his briefcase revealed a lot of material which caught a lot of people whose briefcases revealed a lot of further material; and the intelligence and security services have been quite clever in exploiting that process. That has affected the morale and the effectiveness of the former regime loyalists but some of them are still active. The more sophisticated, if I can use that word about such an horrific area, planning and operations have been done recently by what we have called loosely "imported" terrorism, non‑Iraqi terrorism, not all of it al‑Qaeda as such or Ansar al-Islam but people who have learnt from the experiences of international terrorism and extremist Sunni terrorism and that I think is the most lethal threat at this moment of spectacular attacks of suicide bombers coming out of that area, but they do not necessarily form the majority by number of the attacks that have been perpetrated. Q24 Sir John Stanley: Sir Jeremy, before we turn to the final topic we want to raise, could you tell us whether the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has been effectively abandoned as a lost cause or whether the Iraq Survey Group is still continuing to look for them? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Sir John, I have no responsibility for this area and I have not been engaged in any of the detailed work of ISG at all. I have never been briefed by ISG or met any of its number; it is not my area. However, I understand, just to give you any information that I can in this hearing, that Charles Duelfer, the new head of ISG, believes that there remains a considerable amount of work to do and he continues to wish to do that work with ISG over the coming period. For how long is up to ISG. I understand that there is a considerable amount of work still to do in this area, it is not being abandoned. Q25 Ms Stuart: To allow you to stick to the time limit I will roll all my questions into one. There are two issues. The first concerns the regional government and the restructuring of the economy. Iraq has got 11 per cent of the world's oil supplies. It uniquely has water so it has a huge potential. It will end up with a federal structure and we all know people mean different things by the word federal. We have also got a system where 60 per cent of the population is still receiving food aid and a system of subsidies. For the future structure, to what extent are the Kurdish people satisfied that their demands for regional government are in place and are sustainable? There are two economy-related questions. What progress is being made in moving towards a system of taxation, both corporate and personal, which would give us a structure of democratic accountability rather than just handing out largesse by government. Bound in with that, what progress has been made in sorting out rights of property titles which will have to be resolved before foreign investors in particular will want to come into Iraq and help rebuild the country? Sir Jeremy Greenstock: On the use of resources by the regions, which is the basis of your first question about Kurdistan as I understand it, there are different views amongst different parts of the Kurdish population. They negotiated quite hard in the discussions on the Transitional Law for the regions to own their own resources and, as it were, lease them back to the centre. That was not the way the Law came out, but some decisions on use of resources as between the centre and regions have been left for the permanent constitutional debate amongst elected representatives in Iraq. For the moment we are continuing the orthodox approach, if you like, that resources are the property of all Iraqis; but to some extent the regions can benefit from the fact that they produce some of these resources in getting local business out their production. And of course some resources differ because oil and water have a certain strategic quality to them whereas quarried stone or agriculture do not have that characteristic. There is plenty still to be debated in that area but from the reaction so far to the adoption of the Transitional Law I think people feel we have reached a fair deal for the moment in what is said in the Law about resources. On the taxation system that you mention, Iraq must be one of the cheapest places to live in in terms of energy prices, electricity prices and taxation, and there is no doubt that a responsible governed economy in Iraq will need to institute prices nearer to market prices for those commodities and a taxation system that takes some of the burden off the oil industry to supply all the resources for government. We decided in the CPA not to make many changes in these areas for two reasons. One, we have not got much time to institute new systems and bring them into being and, two, as an occupation under the Fourth Geneva Convention we are not supposed to bring in laws that affect the long‑term future of the Iraqi state, only what is necessary for the current administration of it; and to that extent we have postponed for the sovereign period the larger macroeconomic decisions and fiscal decisions on taxation, pricing and the relationship between the centre and the regions in the management of the economy, so much of that is still to come. Some changes are going to be necessary, in the view of many economists, for Iraq to be fully responsibly governed in the economic sphere. As for property titles, the IGC has recently brought into being the Iraqi Property Claims Commission, which is going to establish itself to sort out the controversies over property that have arisen from the displacement of the populations under the Saddam regime and from other disputes that arise in the course of any normal community history. That will come into being quite quickly, I hope, and will start its work as early as anywhere in Kirkuk, where the politics of territory are very divisive and tense at the moment. The IPCC has got a lot of work to do and we want to see it up and running very quickly. Q26 Sir John Stanley: Sir Jeremy, the whole Committee is aware that after your very distinguished period as our Permanent Representative in the United Nations it must have been a considerable personal challenge to take on this extraordinary and very difficult and personally by no means free from risk role as Britain's senior representative in Iraq. We are obviously very grateful to you for coming in front of us today but most particularly we as a Committee are very grateful to you for the signal contribution which you personally have made in trying to move Iraq towards a free, multi‑party democracy. Thank you very much indeed. Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Thank you very much for those words. [1] Patriotic Union of Kurdistan [2] Kurdistan Democratic Party |