Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 154)
TUESDAY 11 JULY 2006
MR CARNE
ROSS
Q140 Lord Kingsdown:
Do you think that either the UK or the European Union or the United
Nations has the institutions and procedures and the staffing needed
to make targeted sanctions effective?
Mr Ross: I have not done a recent comprehensive
survey so I cannot claim to be an authority, but my sense is that
they have not.
Q141 Lord Kingsdown:
If they do not have, what explains the failure to put the required
arrangements in place in the past, and what are the priorities
for action now? What is the prospect for targeted sanctions in
these circumstances?
Mr Ross: My own view is that the UN should be
told to build up a special unit, or part of the Secretariat, devoted
solely to this question. The Security Council Secretariat at present
is responsible for sanctions administration through the various
committees that are set up by the Security Council and I think
they should be instructed by the Security Council to develop a
body of expertise on financial sanctions, travel sanctions, all
the different aspects of targeted sanctions. That expertise is
out there and it can be accessed and they should be encouraged
to do that. I think also that the British Government should be
encouraged to set up a similar cross-ministerial body in Britain.
At the moment, I think it is the United Nations department, or
what used to be called the United Nations department of the Foreign
Office, that still co-ordinates sanctions policy across Whitehall.
I am sure they do that very well, but it might be better, given
the experience of Iraq, to set up some kind of cross-ministerial
unit which has a more permanent nature to it. One of the problems
I have found is a very simple problem, that desk officers in the
foreign ministries, certainly in the Foreign Office, rotate through
desks every 18 months or two years and so the expertise is constantly
forgotten and relearned, and I do not think this is right for
a subject of this complexity.
Q142 Lord Sheppard of Didgemere:
You have touched on a lot of this, on various subjects, with examples
from Iraq, and so on, but, dealing with the generalisation, are
there any particular problems associated with monitoring of targeted
as opposed to general economic sanctions?
Mr Ross: Absolutely. There are manifold problems
with all kinds of sanctions; none of them is easy. Targeted sanctions
are but a subset of comprehensive economic sanctions. One of the
curiosities of comprehensive economic sanctions was that we actually
neglected those subsets. Things like asset freezes and targeted
financial measures against the regime were actually very low on
our list, in terms of the policing of comprehensive economic sanctions.
So, paradoxically, we gave it much less attention than perhaps
we could have done if it had been just a targeted sanctions policy
against the regime. As I say, I think the expertise in these things
is quite hard to find. There are forensic accountants, people
who are skilled in tracking hidden assets, that kind of thing;
those are the people you need for this kind of work and they should
be identified.
Q143 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
I am puzzled slightly still, because everything you have said,
from your own experience, suggests that economic sanctions not
only do not work in achieving their objectives but probably they
are counterproductive, unless, of course, the objective is a very,
very trivial one, like the surrender of the two Libyans who were
implicated in the Lockerbie bombing. We are usually more ambitious
than that, what we are talking about here, in the case of Iraq,
possibly even in Iran, indeed, and North Korea, would be much
more ambitious than that, and yet you seem to cling on to the
idea that there is some Holy Grail of sanctions that work. For
example, you actually go so far as to say in your written evidence
that if the thing had been done efficiently, technically, properly,
and so on, with asset freeze, and so on, then the regime would
have been severely weakened and perhaps would have collapsed.
Do you really believe that?
Mr Ross: Yes, really I do.
Q144 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
With what evidence? Where has this happened?
Mr Ross: There is no similar example to Iraq,
where you had a regime that was so wholly dependent upon one particular
commodity for its survival, and that commodity was oil. We knew
that Iraq was illegally exporting oil and thus garnering income
for the regime, and I and other officials in the British and American
Governments frequently argued that if we made an attempt to stop
those flows that would severely undermine the regime from within.
I do not think anybody disputed the logic of that argument in
our Governments, but the practical measures to implement that
were not taken, for the reasons I have explained to Lord Oakeshott.
Q145 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
You say there is nothing else like Iraq, but countries have other
sources of income always. If you take Cuba, for example, in Cuba,
Castro has been in power for well over 40 years, despite American
sanctions designed to bring him down, and almost certainly would
not have been in power for that length of time had sanctions not
been there. This was not through smuggled oil revenues. He got
a certain amount of money from the sugar which was sold in the
Soviet Union, but that was not what kept him afloat. What kept
him afloat was that he could always blame the Americans for any
economic hardships or humanitarian difficulties which they suffered,
and even to this day, and I was there not so long ago. Just an
example of how totalitarian regimes work, which it seems to me
was simply not grasped by the Foreign Office, if I may say so.
In Cuba there are great hardships, a shortage of medicines. Médecins
Sans Frontie"res and a number of other do-gooding agencies
sent all sorts of drugs into Cuba. It is not happening now; those
drugs never reached the people, because the Government control
everything. If you are a tourist it is very convenient; if you
are a tourist you can get the most wonderful medical care immediately
in Cuba because Castro needs the foreign exchange, he needs a
good tourist trade, and the poor Cubans, and you can talk to poor
Cubans in the street, will say how their children are dying because
they cannot get the drugs which you, as a tourist, can get. These
are from Médecins Sans Frontie"res, and some
people blame Castro for that, most of them blame the sanctions
for all the hardships they suffer. The idea that somehow there
is some Holy Grail, as I say, of sanctions that will work is not,
I think, supported by the evidence in the real world. It is a
nice little fairy tale which you and your former colleagues used
to like to tell yourselves, that if only the British and the Americans
were sensible they could do it properly and it would work. I do
not think there is any evidence to support that, is there; if
so, tell me?
Mr Ross: I hold no brief to defend the Foreign
Office these days.
Q146 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
We may have gathered that.
Mr Ross: I dare say that I think the two examples
are very different, and I think for important and significant
reasons, which actually support my thesis rather than yours. Iraq
was guilty of an egregious act, which was to invade Kuwait, and
it was also found to be developing nasty weapons, and that was
felt, by the international community, and not just America and
the West, to be a very bad thing and that something should be
done to stop them behaving in that way. At the outset there was
enormous international support for control measures on Iraq, through
the UN Security Council. Sanctions on Cuba, by contrast, are not
supported by anybody except the US, and Cuba trades openly and
widely with lots of other countries, so the pressure on Cuba is
not very likely to succeed in overthrowing the regime or securing
any other form of change in Cuba. I think that rather reinforces
the thesis that I put in my evidence, that if you are ever going
to be successful with sanctions you have got to have a wider international
legitimacy for it. The case for Iraq, I think, does show that
actually it was possible for a time—there was a period in
the 1990s, and I think that period lasted quite long, into the
late 1990s—where we could have secured wide international
support for measures which targeted just the regime. I do not
think Saddam, despite the claims of French and Russian allegiance
to him, had any real allies in the world, and none that would
have stood up and supported him in the Security Council. If we
could have designed a package of measures which targeted the regime
effectively and backed that up with very tough, coercive diplomacy
with Saddam's neighbours, I think that had a chance of being successful,
and I do not think that was a naïve view. I think, personally,
that should have been given a try before sending 150,000 men in
to invade. I think at least that would have been a reasonable
thing to have attempted before going to war. It was never attempted,
even though it was frequently suggested by the officials concerned.
Q147 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
Incidentally, you were aware that during that time Total,
the great French international oil company, was busy getting all
sorts of concessions in Iraq. I know this because at that time
I was a member of the International Advisory Board of Total,
and indeed my American opposite number was Paul Wolfowitz who
resigned on that very issue because they were doing that. I think
that the French definitely had a very different perspective right
throughout?
Mr Ross: They did, but they still voted for
the sanctions measures in the Security Council; they did not feel
justified in voting those things down, Total or no Total.
There were particular clauses of the resolutions we called the
Total Clause, because we were so aware of the French commercial
interest in having particular measures passed. I think we allowed
the political capital, which undoubtedly we had, to be wasted
in the 1990s through a very crude and blunt instrument, namely
comprehensive economic sanctions, which did not have as precise
an effect as perhaps it could have done if we had taken a little
bit more care with the engineering and enforcement of it. I do
not think it is just about clever design and idealistic thinking
about targeted sanctions. I do think it is also about a very consistent
and muscular approach to diplomacy, where, as I argued in my evidence,
sanctions enforcement over the years slowly dropped down the list.
Even though our ministers claimed that containing Iraq was a primary
security concern, very rarely did they raise the issue of sanctions
enforcement with the countries concerned, particularly those countries
breaching sanctions. I think that we should have developed a much
more comprehensive and co-ordinated approach diplomatically to
do that, and I do not think that is naïvety, I think it is
pure pragmatism, and it could have been done.
Q148 Lord Skidelsky:
I feel that you do have a tendency in your evidence to suggest
that better design and better technique could actually solve political
problems. You say that sanctions should have pure objectives against
which you can judge success and failure, but if you look at the
sanctions imposed on Iraq, technically there was SCR 687, which
required complete disarmament and it laid down what Iraq should
do and would judge its behaviour according to those. That was
the explicit objective, but the substantive objective was simply
to disarm him, whether or not he complied with every dot of the
resolution, every i and t. Then there was another objective, which
was to get rid of him, so there was never any possibility, I would
have thought, of getting a clear set of objectives out of the
conflicting aims of the powers. On the first criterion the sanctions
failed, on the second they succeeded, on the third they failed,
because he was still there, so which was it that was important?
I am not talking about the technical requirements that were imposed
on him, but the substantive requirement was surely that he should
never be a threat again, and in that respect they have succeeded.
They were not recognised as having succeeded, because essentially
there was a secret agenda.
Mr Ross: I suppose that is true, but also, in
terms of the stated objective, 687 actually succeeded as well.
Iraq was disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction and medium-range
missiles, as we discovered after the war, and, in fact, we believed
before the war, though the Government said the contrary at the
time.
Q149 Lord Skidelsky:
What I am suggesting is, so the failure had nothing to do with
lack of muscular diplomacy. The failure and what led to the war
was that there was a secret objective, which could not have been
secured really—or I do not see evidence for it—by
the type of diplomacy you are talking about, that is, actually
to destroy the regime?
Mr Ross: I beg to disagree. I think it was achievable.
It is a rather complicated, technical argument.
Q150 Lord Skidelsky:
Technical?
Mr Ross: Yes, in the sense that the regime was
dependent upon $1½ billion to $2 billion worth of illegal
oil imports. We knew exactly where these things were going out.
They were going through a pipeline in Syria, they were going through
trucks to Turkey, they were going through another pipeline to
Jordan and they were going in ships, through the Gulf. We knew
exactly where it was, we had satellite evidence of it, we talked
to the oil traders who were buying it, we knew which companies
were purchasing it, we knew which countries were supporting it,
Turkey, Jordan, some of the Gulf countries, etc., etc. Yet when
my Foreign Minister, or my Prime Minister, went to visit those
countries he did not raise it. Tony Blair went to Syria, I think,
in early 2002. He did not raise the pipeline, the illegal smuggling
by Syria. Why did he not? Surely that was a possibility to shut
down Saddam's source of illegal revenue; this surely was something
that could have been done. I do not think it was na-£ve or
impossible, far from it; we felt it was eminently possible. I
felt, in the build-up to the war, that the Governments concerned
were very dismissive of sanctions. I remember George Bush talking
about sanctions being as full of holes as Swiss cheese. That was
not our private view at all, in the State Department and in the
Foreign Office. We felt that sanctions had been very effective
in stopping Iraq from rearming, but they could be made even more
effective in terms of denying funds to the Iraqi regime. And yet
the hard technical work to make that a reality and the consistent
and organised diplomatic work to enforce the embargo and finally
get the neighbours to stop the illegal smuggling was never done.
I do not see why it was so hard to persuade Turkey, for instance,
to stop the smuggling over its border, especially if you offered
them the binary alternative of a war. Which do you think Turkey
would have preferred, the same for Jordan, or for the Gulf?
Q151 Chairman:
We have reached the point where perhaps it is not a good idea
for you to be asking us the questions, rather than the other way
round.
Mr Ross: My question was purely rhetorical.
Q152 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
You were just saying that Saddam required export markets to get
his funds, and therefore if you had stopped these markets somehow
that would have had an effect, but your actual proposition in
your written evidence is a two-part thing, that the funds then
which had accrued overseas could have been seized and used to
help the humanitarian effort in Iraq. Surely that is not suspect
because there is no reason why Saddam would hold his funds in
countries where he thought those assets would be seized, and if
he thought they were going to be seized everywhere he would make
sure that they were in banks in Iraq. You have this humanitarian
problem, to which you alluded right at the beginning, whatever
happened, the idea that you could not really have stopped the
exports, which is difficult enough, because of the Syrian pipeline,
and all of that. But you could actually have seized funds. That
it would alleviate the humanitarian suffering really does beggar
belief, because why would he allow his funds to be seized?
Mr Ross: Because he would not have any choice.
You would identify where they were, then you would go to the government
concerned and say—
Q153 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
It would be repatriated before that? While you are discussing
that with the countries, he knows you are discussing it, he will
repatriate it?
Mr Ross: This is one of the problems. You have
to do it in secret and you have to do it stealthily and seize
quickly. But it can be done. It was done with Milosevic quite
successfully. The EU set up a unit that targeted his funds and
found his assets and seized them. It can be done. You are slightly
confusing the argument, if I may say so. The whole thing about
denying him oil revenues was to stop him getting funds in the
first place; if you had stopped him selling that illegal oil,
that oil would have had to go into the UN escrow account and that
would have increased the funds for the humanitarian programme.
Q154 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
It would have stayed in the ground?
Mr Ross: Actually, it would not have; we looked
into that. Once you have set up a certain pumping capacity, actually
you have to keep pumping. You cannot just stop, you cannot just
leave it in the ground. Otherwise you cause massive damage to
your future capacity and we knew the Iraqis were concerned about
that.
Chairman: I think we are getting into
more broad detail than our study. Really I think perhaps we ought
to bring this to an end. You have given us a fascinating account
of the world of which you have got a great deal of experience
and we are very grateful to you for that, and thank you very much
indeed for coming along.
|
