In a Government press briefing Foreign Secretary Jack Straw answered questions from journalists on the Iraq crisis.
Mr Straw said:
"Our message to the people of Iraq is that we are with you, we support you in your plain wish to rid yourselves of the terrible leadership of Saddam Hussein which has terrorised the Iraqi people for the past two decades, and we want to see your suffering come to an end."
The UK Government have published a document outlining its vision for Iraq and its people following military action. Read ‘A Vision for Iraq and the Iraqi People’.
Read the transcript in full below:
Foreign Secretary:
Good Morning. For many months we have sought to persuade Saddam Hussein to disarm peacefully with a strategy of diplomacy, backed by the credible threat of force. But we have stressed all the way through that for this threat to be credible, we had to be prepared to use force if the threat itself was not sufficient. The international community has spent 12 years passing a series of Security Council resolutions and showing very great patience in pursuing the disarmament of Iraq which was demanded by the Security Council should be completed by 1991. Over 4 months ago the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his "final opportunity" to disarm through cooperation. He has rejected that opportunity by once again responding with the familiar pattern of concealment, deceit and delay.
There was a further meeting of the Security Council yesterday to receive a further report from Dr Blix. I quote directly and verbatim from his report. He said three and a half months of work, carried out in Iraq by UNMOVIC, have not brought the assurances needed about the absence of weapons of mass destruction and other proscribed items in Iraq. And he went on to say, may I add that in my last report I commented on information provided by Iraq on a number of unresolved issues. Since that last report, which was 7 March, "Iraq has sent several more letters on such issues." And he goes on, our exports have so far found that in substance these letters contain only limited new information that will help to resolve remaining questions. And those of you who are familiar with the reports and Security Council resolutions contained here, and republished by me to the British House of Commons, will know that in report, after report, after report, by UNMOVIC there is laid bare there all the unresolved disarmament issues and chapter and verse about how Saddam has failed to meet his disarmament obligations.
And the result of that is that since we are absolutely clear that Saddam Hussein took a long time ago, and has continued with it, a strategic decision to defy the international community, in accordance with Resolution 1441 and its thirteenth operative paragraph, we have been left with no option but to use force. A preliminary attack on command and control facilities was launched in the early hours of this morning and my colleague, the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, will be making a statement in the House of Commons about this very shortly.
Now some members of the Security Council at yesterday’s meeting continued to argue that we should disarm Iraq by maintaining the leisurely pace of the work programme laid down under a previous resolution passed in 1999, Resolution 1284. Let’s be clear about 1284. 1284 was a British initiative. It took months to negotiate. In the course of those negotiations, in order to try and reach a consensus we had to water down the powers of the inspectors. We finally got support, but three key members of the Security Council - France, China and Russia - refused to support 1284, and 1284 failed. It was seeking disarmament by exhortation of Saddam, he refused even to allow the inspectors into Iraq, still less to do their work. 1441 was there to replace 1284. 1441 backs inspections with a credible threat of force. And everybody in the Security Council signed up for 1441. When they were signing up for 1441 they were not saying this is disarmament by peace, as is now suggested; what they were saying to Saddam was either you disarm peacefully, or you have to accept that the international community will disarm you by force. It was never the case that 1441 implied the automatic use of force, and neither have we ever suggested it, but it is the case that 1441 required that force should be used unconditionally if Saddam Hussein failed to comply by peaceful means, and he has now triggered those conditions.
Now at this time of the beginning of conflict, I want to say this in terms of our message to the people of Iraq. Our message to the people of Iraq is that we are with you, we support you in your plain wish to rid yourselves of the terrible leadership of Saddam Hussein which has terrorised the Iraqi people for the past two decades, and we want to see your suffering come to an end. Earlier this week we published a paper called "A Vision for Iraq and the Iraqi People" and this commits us to working for the relief and reconstruction of Iraq after Saddam.
We will be discussing these issues with our partners at the European Council, the summit meeting in Brussels tonight and tomorrow. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and I will be going to Brussels. Part of the agenda of the Brussels Summit represents the important internal work for the European Union, particularly taking forward the Lisbon Agenda of economic reform. But of course the summit will also be dominated by Iraq, and what we shall be arguing for is for the European community to come together and recognise that we have a common agenda working for the humanitarian relief of Iraq and its reconstruction. Towards that our own Department for International Development has committed £20 million to immediate preparations for humanitarian relief, and has earmarked a further £60 million for humanitarian operations. The United Kingdom forces themselves will have £30 million for humanitarian purposes available to them to use in the first months.
It is a mark of the appalling record of Saddam Hussein that Iraq is a prosperous country which has been reduced to penury, not least by the huge sums wasted on wars and on the development of weapons of mass destruction, and it is a measure of Saddam’s indifference to human suffering that more than half the population in rural areas do not have access to safe drinking water and that more Iraqi children die before reaching the age of 5 than in a number of impoverished sub-Saharan countries. And all this whilst more than $2 billion of Oil for Food programme funds remains untouched, but available, by the Iraqi regime.
Our pledge is to work with the international community to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people and to support an international reconstruction programme. And to this end, as the conclusions of the Azores Summit committed us, we shall be working very hard to secure a new United Nations Security Council resolution.
Question:
Foreign Secretary, two quick ones if I might. You described the overnight attacks as a limited attack on command and control facilities. Can you confirm that it was also an attempt to kill Saddam and can you give us your assessment of his subsequent broadcast? Do we think it was him and therefore has that failed as an objective? And secondly, can you help us by giving us a little bit more information about the telephone call from your close friend, Dominique, that we read about in the newspapers?
Foreign Secretary:
So far as the first, you will forgive me, but Geoff Hoon is our Defence Secretary and he will be giving information about the military activities overnight. So far as the conversation with my genuinely good friend Dominique de Villepin is concerned, it is obvious that there is a difference of opinion on this question and the difference of opinion was not there in the run-up to 1441 which was passed on 8 November, it has been there this year. I received Minister Villepin’s message, which he asked me to pass on to British Prime Minister Blair, which I duly did, but I said that we did not accept the burden of it, and I also had to say to him that the problem for us was that we made a judgment, which I think is supported increasingly by the evidence, that some time either late last year or earlier this year France had taken a strategic decision not to implement Resolution 1441, and as far as we were concerned that is the mother and father of the problems.
Question:
Are relations pretty bad at the moment?
Foreign Secretary:
Personal relations are I think very good and I look forward to seeing Dominique in Brussels later on today. I think we will get through this period.
Question:
Foreign Secretary, given the scale of newly expressed international opposition to this war, how confident can you be of getting the authorisation that you vitally need from the Security Council to legitimise aspects of military occupation of Iraq, particularly the process leading to the transfer to an interim civilian administration eventually, and also crucially of course to get access to the Oil for Food Programme in the absence of an Iraqi government once military occupation is in place. How confident can you really be of getting the Security Council behind you, as you must? Are you as confident as you were of getting a second resolution, or slightly less confident?
Foreign Secretary:
If you read the transcripts of the comments that were made yesterday in the Security Council it is very clear that regardless of their opinions on the use of military force against Iraq, there is a widespread understanding in the international community and in the Security Council abut the humanitarian and reconstruction needs which are there already as a result of Saddam’s impoverishment, and will be still more necessary once Saddam has been removed. We are in the early stages of discussing the resolution, not least because the military action has only just begun, rather than just completed, but I think we will get there. Can I just say this about international support. There is actually widespread international support for this military action and within Europe 14 of the 25 countries which will form part of the new European Union, and those 25 will be round the table in mid-April, are actually supporting this action.
Question:
Could you please tell us a bit more about how much notice did we have of last night’s attack, and also (a)will there have to be another discussion between the Prime Minister and the President before British troops actually go into action? And can you give an assurance to the troops, and the mothers of those troops if you like, that before British troops are sent into action it will be the decision of our Prime Minister, and they are not just going in under the command of the Americans?
Foreign Secretary:
Elinor, first of all the premise of your question is, with respect, rather mistaken. There have been endless and very detailed discussions with our American colleagues and the other allies directly involved in the military planning over months and then weeks, and intensively over days, about the nature of the campaign. And it should go without saying that because we have committed 42,000 troops there and are very heavily involved in all the military preparations, that the strategy is one which is a shared and agreed one. Some tactical decisions are made by strategic commanders on the ground, but as I think Geoff Hoon said this morning on the radio, the Prime Minister and he were informed in advance, and so I think was I, because I was woken from my bed in the small hours of this morning, I can’t tell you exactly what time it was except it was very early and shortly after I had gone to sleep.
Question:
Can you tell us something more about your conversation with the Turkish Foreign Minister and when you think you might get an answer about using their air space?
Foreign Secretary:
I had a good conversation with Foreign Minister Gul yesterday, I am going to see him in a meeting tomorrow in Brussels, because he will be there, for a bilateral. Foreign Minister Gul explained that there will be before the Turkish Parliament today a resolution providing authorisation for the use of their air space by foreign military forces, and he said that he was looking forward to that passing.
Question:
Foreign Secretary, the first shots have been fired in this war. Can we then assume that the main assault is now imminent? And can you tell us, as we stand on the brink of whatever is to come, what the mood of Cabinet and War Cabinet was this morning?
Foreign Secretary:
On your first point, it was a point I was making in Cabinet and I don’t mind lifting the veil to this extent, that the intensity of pressure on people in this room because of competing 24 hour television news services means that you will require from us a running commentary on our forward military plans, but I understand those pressures but I think the whole country will understand that for the most obvious reasons of safety we cannot provide that commentary. And when there are announcements to be made so far as our military activity, they will be made principally by my colleague Geoff Hoon or the Minister of Defence at an appropriate and safe moment. So far as the mood in Cabinet is concerned, it is a very sober and serious mood but one of complete commitment and support for the strategy which the Prime Minister set out so eloquently and powerfully in his speech on Tuesday.
Question:
How crucial is it in your view now that when we go into Iraq that you discover weapons of mass destruction to justify the action?
Foreign Secretary:
Well I think the answer lies in this 173 pages of the report which Dr Blix published last week. Iraq has provided no credible explanations about the 10,000 litres of anthrax, the tons of VX and so on, just that.
Question:
It has been reported that you asked to use the Turkish air bases. I wonder why the English needs the use of those air bases now, and why so late today, or yesterday, and not before?
Foreign Secretary:
I was talking to Minister Gul about the use of air space. We already have use of an air base at Incirlik, eastern Turkey, and I was also talking to him about the conditions for its use.
Question:
As you head for Brussels, Foreign Secretary, would you like to say what are the longer term implications from a British government point of view of this split in Europe and the French and German determination in particular to have a common foreign policy, perhaps with majority voting, a single Foreign Minister and so on, in view of the split not only over the use of force in Iraq but also over relations with the United States? And secondly, do you accept that in view of the dismay and concern around the world, the conduct of the military operation in the coming days and the humanitarian operation will be crucial for whether or not you have convinced the world of the justice of your action at this time?
Foreign Secretary:
As far as your first question is concerned, it has always been the case that on some foreign policy issues in Europe there are differences of opinion, and that is why we have always argued that foreign policy has to be an intergovernmental issue where we agree where we can agree, but we take our own separate decisions where we cannot agree, and that is in fact the very clear position particularly of the French government of course represent the Republic of France and not any individual part of the European Union in the Security Council, just as do we. There are plenty of areas, as it happens, where the development of common foreign policy is being productive and that includes not least our work in the Balkans and our approval of a new force in Macedonia. As to your second question about international support, the point I would make in return, particularly to our French and German colleagues, is what is the alternative? Yesterday in the Security Council Joschka Fischer said that the Security Council agreed that Iraq’s cooperation with the inspectors was unsatisfactory. He then went on to argue for his strategy, and his strategy is one which will simply run into the ground, as previous efforts to secure the disarmament of Iraq by exhortation alone always has done. And war is unpleasant, war should only ever be a last resort. There will be innocent civilians killed in this military action and we cannot resile from that or use euphemisms to cover up that reality. But what we say is that the number of Iraqi lives saved by this military action will far exceed the number of people who sadly will be killed. It is a terrible calculation that we have to make, but it is one you have to make if there is to be a proper justification for military action. It is one we have taken and we think it right.
Question:
You have said that you will provide international aid, do you accept that the current split between various members of the EU, France on one side and Britain on the other side for example, is going to put into question the role of the EU in the reconstruction of Iraq after the war?
Foreign Secretary:
Well I hope not. Plainly Europe is much more effective when it is united than when it is divided, and there is a division at the moment on the issue of military action in Iraq. But the European Union is a very resilient institution and I believe that everybody recognises in Europe the need for us to come together to secure humanitarian relief and the reconstruction of Iraq, it may take time before we get those terms finally agreed.
Question:
You understandably have put the best possible gloss on the position in Europe for tonight’s meeting, but isn’t it true that what has happened as a result of Iraq is that we are now confronting a fundamental crossroads between old and new Europe. You yourself cited the fact that among those who are in favour of this military action, most of them are in the new membership of the European Union, and there is something which you are now facing, an almost insurmountable obstacle with France and German in the development of such things for instance as the European Convention leading towards a constitution.
Foreign Secretary:
Trevor, first of all it is 6 out of 15 countries, but my guess is that it is half the people of Europe by population - Spain, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom - of the current 15, and it is 14 of the new 25. Yes there is a big issue here about how we secure international peace and security, in a sense how we make for a safer world, and there are those who are arguing that we do that by setting part of Europe in rivalry to the United States. That is a strategy which I think is fatally flawed, it can only lead to division. And our approach and the approach of a majority of European countries, is to work in partnership with the United States and with other countries around the world. And as for the Convention on the Future of Europe, as it happens there are many issues where there is not agreement between France and Germany. France is a very proud nation state and with a very long history as a nation state, Germany is also a proud nation but is less concerned about what they would see as older concepts of sovereignty than is France and the United Kingdom, and the aim of the convention is to try and secure a reconciliation of those.
Question:
What are your own concerns for the coming weeks? You have talked about the possibility of civilian casualties, but how likely is it, do you think, that Saddam Hussein will use weapons of mass destruction on British troops?
Foreign Secretary:
Well our concern of course is to ensure that this military action is over as quickly as possible and with the minimum loss of life, and huge efforts are being made to secure that end. As to tactics Saddam Hussein will use, I am afraid I can’t speculate on those. What we do know is that he does have weapons of mass destruction, the whole international community knows that and it is exactly for that reason that we agreed unanimously Resolution 1441 which begins by saying that Saddam Hussein’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and his long range missiles, and his defiance of the United Nations, poses a threat to international peace and security, and it ends by saying that if Saddam refuses to comply peacefully then serious consequences will follow. And every single thing that we are doing is fully in compliance with Resolution 1441. What we are doing is putting that resolution into effect, not avoiding it.
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