Posted on 05/05/2003 4:42:30 PM PDT by Pokey78
Britain tried to defuse the Iraq crisis by communicating through secret channels with Saddam Hussein's regime for at least two years, according to documents found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad.
Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary and a former Foreign Office minister, confirmed the contents of the files found in the Iraqi foreign ministry.
They detail private overtures to Iraq, several involving Mr Hain, in 2000 and 2001, apparently with the support of the Clinton administration.
Using many intermediaries, including Arab governments, Britain sought to assure Saddam that it was serious about effecting a deal being offered through the United Nations.
The offer was that if Iraq readmitted weapons inspectors in line with UN resolution 1284, sanctions would be lifted within six months.
Iraq repeatedly spurned the opportunity to rehabilitate itself, although resolution 1284 gave the inspectors a far softer mandate than the terms under which they were eventually admitted last November.
"It was quite clear to me that this was going nowhere because Saddam was not interested in having weapons inspectors," Mr Hain said.
"We let it wither. It was clear that the Iraqis were trying to manoeuvre a situation to gain a diplomatic coup. Nevertheless, it was worth trying, especially given the involvement of many Middle Eastern foreign ministers."
The documents came from the same set of files purporting to show that George Galloway, the Labour MP, benefited from oil and food contracts in Iraq - an allegation he denies.
Mr Galloway claims that he helped to promote a secret dialogue between Britain and Iraq. He told the Sunday Herald in Glasgow that Mr Hain knew of his visit to Baghdad over Christmas 1999, when he stayed with Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister.
"Hain agreed we should start such a dialogue," he said.
Mr Hain denied that Mr Galloway was a go-between. "Galloway had absolutely no role at all," he said. "He did tell me he had spent Christmas Day with Tariq Aziz and I was astonished to hear about it."
Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary, said: "It is fair to say that we were looking for a way of resolving the crisis in our own interests. We wanted inspectors to go back. It was in co-operation with the Clinton administration. That changed with the election of a new administration."
The documents show intense Iraqi interest in opening a dialogue with Britain, at least since 1998. Baghdad hoped to break the American-imposed isolation by wooing Tony Blair away from the policy of containment.
However, moves to establish contacts in early 1998 through two former ambassadors to Iraq, Sir John Moberly and Sir Terence Clark, came to nothing. The next attempt was made in early 2000 after the Security Council passed resolution 1284.
This offered Iraq a suspension of sanctions and eventual lifting of the embargo if it started to co-operate with weapons inspectors.
Britain, facing criticism that the years of sanctions were causing unacceptable suffering to ordinary Iraqis while failing to weaken Saddam, issued private assurances that the offer was genuine.
A British charity, the Next Century Foundation, tried several times to mediate between Mr Hain and Iraqi officials. Signals were also passed on through Arab foreign ministers.
The documents include a copy of a letter from Mr Cook, telling his Jordanian counterpart, Abdul Illah Khatib, on September 1, 2000: "As soon as Iraq begins co-operating with [weapons inspectors], it will be on the road to the suspension of sanctions." By the end of 2000, hope was fading. The incoming government of President George W Bush was openly committed to toppling Saddam.
Two months after September 11, when war with Iraq was already being debated in Washington, the Next Century Foundation tried to arrange a meeting between Mr Hain and Naji Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, at the UN.
William Morris, the charity's secretary general, who confirms the contents of the documents, said: "People of good conscience were trying to avert war, but I knew it was futile."
Quick spin as to Bush. But another article from same paper says:
However, the window of opportunity was closing. Mr Morris said he travelled to Baghdad in October 2000 with Anthony Harris, the former British ambassador to UAE.
"Everything was beautifully on the plate," he said. "But Tariq Aziz turned from being Mr Nice to Mr Nasty. The Iraqis blew it."
Actually Gore and Clinton were committed to regime change - and campaigned on it.
An odd thing about these articles is the whole avoidance of the core issue: why did Saddam not want inspectors back? He would have made a pretty penny if sanctions were dropped.
Could it be that the "Oil for Food" program had become so profitable to all concerned -- both Hussein himself and the UN as an institution -- that the parties directly involved had no interest in its conclusion?
Indeed, how would Hussein have benefitted from dropping the program? Economically, it offered him an opportunity to skim millions and, politically, it represented a vital scapegoat to focus his subjects' anger on his enemies. It also afforded a device to compensate his allies -- foreign and domestic. Hussein would gain nothing from a cessation of Oil For Food. He, in fact, would lose...badly.
For its part, the UN and its henchmen would lose their substantial commissions. And they would lose access to immense funds for which they were unaccountable.
Thus, inviting the inspectors back in was a lose-lose proposition for the principals. Even if there was nothing to find...
Interesting.
The "oil for food" program was indeed profitable.
Someone posted to me long ago a message such as "C'mon, Saddam makes money off of sanctions - there's no weapons."
I thought about it. I thought, if there were no sanctions and Iraq could sell oil like before, wouldn't Saddam make more money that way? If, just using money calculation, he could make more from sanctions, how so? Perhaps he personally profitted more through the scheme because "the state" and the people would demand more? But this idea doesn't seem to stop Gulf Arab leaders from pocketing the loot.
Of course the considerations and customs may have evolved over time - the time span of the sanctions regime.
Why not just let the inspectors in? Why the years of games? Wasn't he hiding something, or is it some part of his psychology to play this game?
Another thing to consider - since 1998 Saddam has traded off oil contracts to France, Russia and China to be activiated when and if sanctions were removed. That's why the three over the subsequent years angled to get sanctions removed. In fact, the pressure was building up to 9/11. So he wanted to get sanctions removed - or was it just a trick on the French, etc. to get their arms etc. without paying...ie Hussein didn't care much if sanctions were removed, he got from them what he wanted?
There was talk in 1998 that Albright, etc. frustrated with Hussein and the game said "we don't care about the weapons anymore, he needs to get out". That was the origin of the "regime change" movement - not the "neo-cons." So Hussein "knew" he couldn't succeed even if he complied with inspections. But I think such arguments underestimate his ability to sell compliance to the world.
An ex-Iraqi general said "Hussein has the weapons because he thinks he will be attacked if he doesn't have them". That's a tribal way of thinking because in the real world those weapons made him a target - but he's tribal. In a sense the North Koreans are acting the same way - threatening to export weapons, build them. the reality is if they didn't have them at all and were open US troops would leave Korea faster. It's a different mind set.
What if Hussein didn't have them, but wanted people to think he had? Vague threats of using them against the Kurds, fake radio communications making vague references about deployments. In this regard I noted one of the early videotapes released during the war. It was almost certainly a pre-war tape. It was the one with Dr. Germ sitting prominently with Saddam at a table of officers. Was it a visual threat? Why would Saddam be conferring with her unless it was to "threaten" bio war use?
I suspect the reality is that Hussein didn't invest much in Chem war after 1998 as the weapons were bulky and not very effective in the battlefield. I suspect the emphasis was on bio war, small pox, anthrax, and that some was kept around and research continued. And the reason they weren't used is because of the repeated radio broadcasts saying if they were used the deployers would be treated as war criminals.
BTW, remember during the "inspections" this year there was a picture of a yound man with an armful of documents trying to get UN inspectors in a car to take him in? What ever happened to him? Nothing much good I suspect.
The sanctions created a specific structure -- one that could be manipulated by both Hussein and his enablers at the UN. The Oil For Food program became a way for both sides to profit, financially. Which, at the same time, bought some measure of protection for Hussein.
Think about it. So long as the UN, institutionally, along with the French and Russians, specifically, profited from the Oil For Food program, Hussein could count on institutional support from the UN and a veto in the Security Council.
Open up the Iraq market for competition and Hussein could still pay off the French and the Russians with concessions, but where was his protection? And would he not also lose the shady, unaccountable source of money that allowed him to also buy protection in the international media and assorted parliaments?
Given a choice between making a dollar honestly, in the open, and making a dollar on the sly, there are certain personality types who instinctively prefer the latter. We've all met them at one time in our life.
In sum, there are good reasons why Hussein wanted to retain sanctions and the Oil For Food program. And there were good reasons why others preferred to do business in this venue, as well.
How this conclusion relates to WMD, I can't say. Like you, I believe the chem weapons were more nuisance than threat. But the bioweapons were a whole 'nother kettle of horses of a different color.
And I still wonder what the hell has happened to them, the equipment and the technology...
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