THE CLEAR ambition of the Americans to oust former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by force derailed British efforts to win international support to deal with him, the former British UN ambassador has told the Iraq inquiry.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock said US “gung-ho attitudes” in favour of regime change were “unhelpful” to the efforts by the then British prime minister Tony Blair to gather together an international coalition.
“The UK’s attempt to reconstitute a consensus had only a slim prospect of success, made slimmer by the recognition by everyone else following events closely that the US was not proactively supportive of the UK’s efforts and seemed to be preparing for conflict whatever the UK decided to do,” said Sir Jeremy in a written statement – the first of witnesses this week to furnish the inquiry with such a statement before taking questions.
The US and Britain had “sufficient legal cover” for the 2003 invasion. But it “was legal but of questionable legitimacy”, Sir Jeremy told the inquiry.
“If you do something internationally that the majority of UN member states think is wrong, illegitimate or politically unjustifiable, you are taking a risk in my view,” he said. “The US and the UK had, well before then, decided that the threat from Iraq, which was genuinely perceived as including the potential threat of the use of WMD , could only be terminated either if Saddam Hussein conceded absolutely everything the resolutions demanded, or if his regime fell.”
He said he had threatened to quit in 2002 if an invasion was launched without securing “at least one” UN Security Council resolution. And he said he believed his threat to go had acted as “a stiffener” for Britain in resisting pressure from Washington.
He led the unsuccessful efforts to agree a second security council resolution, but this was blocked by France, Russia and others – triggering allegations ever since that the invasion was illegal under international law.
By March 2003 – just days before the war began, Sir Jeremy said he did not feel that he could argue to the security council that the inspectors had had enough time, and that a smoking gun would have been needed to persuade doubters.
A second resolution would have given the safest possible legal grounds, but he said the United Kingdom’s position during the negotiations was that invasion was permissible on the basis of past UN declarations.
“We were trying to defend the United Nations from being eroded by successive non-compliance by a member state just as much as we were trying to deal with the threat posed by the Iraqi possession of dangerous weapons,” he said.
He said he believed the US and Britain should have delayed the invasion from March to October 2003 to give weapons inspectors more time to inspect Iraq but the momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for Britain to counter.
If given more time and considering the lack of co-operation shown by Iraq to the weapons inspectors led by Swede Hans Blix, Sir Jeremy said he did not believe there was more than a 50 per cent chance that war could have been avoided.