- Tony Blair was warned a year before invading Iraq that
a stable post-war government would be impossible without keeping large
numbers of troops there for "many years", secret government papers
reveal.
-
- The documents, seen by The Telegraph, show more clearly
than ever the grave reservations expressed by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary,
over the consequences of a second Gulf war and how prescient his Foreign
Office officials were in predicting the ensuing chaos.
-
- They told the Prime Minister that there was a risk of
the Iraqi system "reverting to type" after a war, with a future
government acquiring the very weapons of mass destruction that an attack
would be designed to remove.
-
- The documents further show that the Prime Minister was
advised that he would have to "wrong foot" Saddam Hussein into
giving the allies an excuse for war, and that British officials believed
that President George W Bush merely wanted to complete his father's "unfinished
business" in a "grudge match" against Saddam.
-
- But it is the warning of the likely aftermath - more
than a year in advance, as Mr Blair was deciding to commit Britain to joining
a US-led invasion - that is likely to cause most controversy and embarrassment
in both London and Washington.
-
- More than 900 allied troops have been killed in Iraq
since the end of the war, 33 of them British. More than 10,000 civilians
are believed to have been killed.
-
- At least 13 civilians died yesterday in a suicide bomb
attack on a police checkpoint in Baghdad. The Iraqi health ministry said
a further 45 civilians had died in US air attacks on Fallujah overnight.
-
- Mr Straw predicted in March 2002 that post-war Iraq would
cause major problems, telling Mr Blair in a letter marked "Secret
and personal" that no one had a clear idea of what would happen afterwards.
"There seems to be a larger hole in this than anything."
-
- Most of the US assessments argued for regime change as
a means of eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Mr Straw said.
-
- "But no one has satisfactorily answered how there
can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better. Iraq
has no history of democracy so no one has this habit or experience."
-
- Senior ministerial advisers warned bluntly in a "Secret
UK Eyes Only" options paper that "the greater investment of Western
forces, the greater our control over Iraq's future, but the greater the
cost and the longer we would need to stay".
-
- The paper, compiled by the Cabinet Office Overseas and
Defence Secretariat, added: "The only certain means to remove Saddam
and his elite is to invade and impose a new government, but this would
involve nation-building over many years."
-
- Replacing Saddam with another "Sunni strongman"
would allow the allies to withdraw their troops quickly. This leader could
be persuaded not to seek WMD in exchange for large-scale assistance with
reconstruction.
-
- "However, there would then be a strong risk of the
Iraqi system reverting to type. Military coup could succeed coup until
an autocratic Sunni dictator emerged who protected Sunni interests. With
time he could acquire WMD," the paper said.
-
- Even a representative government would be likely to create
its own WMD so long as Israel and Iran retained their own arsenals and
Palestinian grievances remained unresolved.
-
- But there would be other major problems with a democratic
government.
-
- If it were to survive, "it would require the US
and others to commit to nation-building for many years. This would entail
a substantial international security force."
-
- The documents also show the degree of concern within
Whitehall that America was ready to invade Iraq with or without backing
from any of its allies.
-
- Sir David Manning, Mr Blair's foreign policy adviser,
returned from talks in Washington in mid-March 2002 warning that Mr Bush
"still has to find answers to the big questions", which included
"what happens on the morning after?".
-
- In a letter to the Prime Minister marked "Secret
- strictly personal", he said: "I think there is a real risk
that the administration underestimates the difficulties.
-
- "They may agree that failure isn't an option, but
this does not mean they will necessarily avoid it."
-
- The Cabinet Office said that the US believed that the
legal basis for war already existed and had lost patience with the policy
of containment.
-
- It did not see the war on terrorism as being a major
element in American decision-making.
-
- "The swift success of the war in Afghanistan, distrust
of UN sanctions and inspections regimes and unfinished business from 1991
are all factors," it added. That view appeared to be shared by Peter
Ricketts, the Foreign Office policy director.
-
- There were "real problems" over the alleged
threat and what the US was looking to achieve by toppling Saddam, he said.
Nothing had changed to make Iraqi WMD more of a threat.
-
- "Even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will
not show much advance in recent years. Military operations need clear and
compelling military objectives. For Iraq, 'regime change' does not stack
up. It sounds like a grudge match between Bush and Saddam."
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=
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