Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Fire Dispute and Iraq.
Fire Dispute
Asked if the Deputy Prime Minister was going to use his Statement to the House this afternoon to announce that he was going to outlaw fire strikes, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that people should be patient and wait for Mr Prescott’s Statement. That said, he wouldn’t lead journalists down that route.
Iraq
Asked if the Prime Minister was still intending to attend the European Council in Brussels this evening, the PMOS said that he had planned to go and would do so. Asked whether the Prime Minister was confident of being able to persuade our European partners to help fund the reconstruction of Iraq, the PMOS said that the Foreign Secretary had addressed that issue in his briefing this morning. It was important to recognise that we were talking about the reconstruction of Iraq after Saddam, rather than after a war. We believed that other countries would want to contribute to the reconstruction effort once they saw for themselves what Saddam had done to Iraq. Ultimately, however, that was a matter for them. It was not for us to dictate what they should do.
Questioned as to whether the Prime Minister was considering a televised address to the nation, the PMOS said that we were taking things day by day, hour by hour. He was not going to speculate about future events. Asked if the Prime Minister was intending to say anything on camera today, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister would respond at the appropriate time. Asked if he was implying that the Prime Minister was most likely to respond for the first time to last night’s events when he was in Brussels and if so whether he would agree that it would be odd for the Prime Minister to do so given it was the capital of a country that was openly hostile to war, the PMOS said he wasn’t implying anything. He took the opportunity to point out that the Prime Minister was attending an EU summit which happened to be taking place in Brussels and reminded journalists that the EU comprised fifteen member states.
Asked to confirm reports that the Defence Secretary had known before midnight about the impending attack on Baghdad and if so why he hadn’t told the Prime Minister, the PMOS said that as the Foreign Secretary had noted this morning, the premise of this question was entirely wrong. It was based on the suggestion that we and the US worked as separate teams who did not talk to each other. That was completely untrue. We worked together in an interwoven fashion. There were discussions about targets, strategies and tactics going on the whole the time. To suggest that people were keeping back information was to fundamentally misunderstand the process. The reality was that the Prime Minister had been told after midnight. The information had been relayed to him in the proper way. There was no mystery about it. Any attempt to turn this into some sort of controversy was not only wrong, but was to totally and fundamentally misunderstand the depth of the co-operation that existed. Put to him that it was perfectly legitimate to ask questions about timings in terms of who knew what, when, the PMOS said that he had absolutely no intention of providing a running commentary on the process through which decisions were taken. The campaign had been thought through at every level and was something which we would carry through. In our view, the fact that people’s lives were at stake - both in relation to our troops and the Iraqi people - was much more important. We remained committed to safeguarding those lives as much as possible in everything we did. That, however, did not include giving a running commentary about when decisions had or had not been taken. That was the approach we would take throughout this campaign. We would not deviate from it. Any attempts to push us to do so would be rebuffed.
Asked if the Government believed we were at war with Iraq given the fact the Foreign Secretary had referred to last night’s events as ‘preliminary operations’, the PMOS concurred with Mr Straw’s statement that preliminary, rather than substantive, operations had taken place. He cautioned journalists against getting too far ahead of themselves at this stage. It was important to take things day by day and one step at a time. Pressed as to whether we were at war or not, the PMOS said that we were currently engaged in carrying out the wishes of the House of Commons.
Asked why Clare Short was in New York today, the PMOS said that Ms Short was talking to people at the UN, including the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, about the reconstruction of Iraq after Saddam.
Asked if a formal War Cabinet had been established, the PMOS said that a group of Ministers had met with the Prime Minister this morning, as they had done every morning over the last few days.
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