The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (26 page)

There was a full-on welcome and then straight to the president’s residence. There were some pretty overwhelming scenes of poverty on the way and once we got into town the open sewers took some getting used to. But the people were by and large friendly and welcoming. Also, whereas the leadership of some countries lived in inverse proportion to the poverty of the people, with the president [Professor Badruddoza Chowdhury] and PM [Khaleda Zia] too, you were always aware of this being the Third World. They did not overdo their own luxury. The president’s trousers barely reached his feet. Yet the brief had talked of this being a deeply divided and corrupt country. The divisions were clear enough at the broader ministerial meeting where various ministers had a series of arguments right in front of us, constantly interrupting each other and point scoring.

The PM was good, she was just about able to calm them down and she was up for the idea of Bangladesh being part of the ISAF in the future so that was fine. They were all pretty upfront about pitching for money for bridges and roads and the like. We had a brief and very chaotic doorstep before the official dinner, which was like a low-budget wedding reception. The room was a bit dingy and with huge spaces around the edges. The food was OK but not your usual official dinner extravagance, and the cheap tablecloths and paper napkins were a world away from some of the fineries we saw in other parts of the world. I was sitting with our rather loud high commissioner [Dr David Carter], who I quite liked because he was out of the usual cut, though it was odd he spoke no Bengali. I watched Man U vs Newcastle on Bangladeshi TV, which was more than Rory was able to do because it wasn’t the live match at home.

OK coverage out of yesterday but Gus O’Donnell [Treasury permanent secretary, former press secretary to John Major] had given us a bit of a problem. He had done a meeting with students and the papers were mangling it to say that he said effectively that EMU was a political decision and the economics were never likely to be clear and unambiguous. TB was pissed off not just at GB’s general behaviour and modus operandi but also that Gus should be saying this kind of thing and talking about this kind of an issue in a way that gets to the media. I felt, to be fair to Gus, that it was just a statement of the obvious, in that ultimately politicians would have to make a political judgement based on the economic analysis, but TB felt it was where GB was currently parked, namely in a position to say, whatever the economic analysis was, that it was not clear and unambiguous.

The guy from DFID had another clothing mission to perform because I suddenly discovered a hole in my shoe, and he got a shoemaker to bring in a stack of different shoes, none of them terribly nice. Events in Kashmir were the backdrop to the next stage of the visit. TB, David Manning and I met to discuss how we choreograph a sense of TB playing a part in trying to get the immediate problem solved. DM had a paper, making clear our belief that the Pakistanis would ‘go nuclear’ and if they did, that they wouldn’t be averse to unleashing them on a big scale. TB was genuinely alarmed by it and said to David ‘They wouldn’t really be prepared to go for nuclear weapons over Kashmir would they?’ DM said the problem was there wasn’t a clear understanding of strategy and so situations tended to develop and escalate quickly, and you couldn’t really rule anything out. The Kathmandu Asian summit should at least be a chance to calm things down, but the tensions were pretty strong.

After dealing with all that, we then went from the sublime to the ridiculous, with a long discussion about whether TB should wear his Nehru suit. I was marginally in favour provided it didn’t look too ridiculous, partly because hopefully it would be seen as showing respect, but also because if we could generate pictures, we were more likely to generate coverage. We got to the [Windsor] hotel [Bangalore] and he put it on. It looked fine. We went for dinner at the governor of Karnataka’s residence [Raj Bhavan, residence of V. S. Ramadevi], terrific food, and I enjoyed talking to our high commissioner [to India], [Sir] Rob Young, about the enormity of their democracy, the four million electoral officers for example involved in the actual logistical running of an election.

Bangalore. I went out for a run, partly through the affluent upper-middle-class parts, also through some of the new industrial bit, and then through some of the poorer parts, and the feel you got in all three was a real sense of energy and dynamism. There was a phenomenal amount of building work going on, and the high-tech centres were as high-tech as anything back home. I got back for a final run through the speech with TB. He was now beginning to worry whether it was a bit over the top to describe the UK as ‘pivotal’ even though he had said it before. The central argument, that a combination of Britain’s history, current strengths within all the major international institutions, and vision for the future, made us uniquely placed in some of the big international arguments was right. We set off on the long drive out to the university campus in an old Raj-era car, which gave us both backache by the time we got there. The setting was good, though there were too many introductory speeches including one from a minister that was taken as a bit of a go at TB, but his speech went down fine.
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At lunch, I was with some of the people in the big international financial institutions. It really brought home how the scale of development here was going to impact on First World economies.

There was a discussion about TB going to Baghram for a brief visit. Magi wanted to drop the ceremonial part of the Indian visit but David [Manning] and Rob [Young] were both worried about it. MoD security were advising against going there in daylight, so we settled on a rather grim set-up that would mean a long flight back overnight. Magi was really in Magi mode, very tough with both David and Rob, partly out of revenge against the Indians who had cut Cherie out of the [forthcoming] Vajpayee dinner. DM said it was not the same. TB not going to see their president because he wanted to go to Kabul was like Vajpayee cancelling the Queen because he wanted to go to Dublin.

On the way back to the hotel, TB was chatting away about how quickly India’s power was going to grow. He had been quite impressed by some of the British business guys who were down here in Bangalore. We also talked about who was going to fill the gap Anji
had left in relation to what he called ‘personal care and attention’, the problem about the suit on the plane being a classic example. There were obviously difficulties with GB’s baby and TB spoke to him briefly after the baby was transferred to a special care unit.

Gordon’s baby was clearly dying. TB and CB were both genuinely upset. So was Alison [Blackshaw]. Fiona called a couple of times from home to say we had to be careful on the various visits not to look too happy, because the media were obviously trying to set up shots of TB not seeming to care about this developing tragedy at home. Through the day, it was announced that the baby was deteriorating and had had a brain haemorrhage. After Fiona’s second call, we put out a line re TB and CB thinking of them. The Sundays were even more ridiculous than usual, most of them taking as the nose to their stories the throwaway remark by an Indian minister [Pramod Mahajan, parliamentary affairs minister] yesterday that ‘We are cool enough’ as a great snub, India saying fuck off as a response to him re his Nehru suit.

I was more convinced than ever that we had to articulate this business of us having a press that actively wanted failure. The Indian press had been overwhelmingly positive about the speech, about him and CB, about our role. I went to the gym, where the little guy in there insisted on giving me a workout on the weights, and I was in agony by the time I got back to see TB. We went out on the rooftop of the hotel for a chat and he was clearly a bit down. He was putting enormous effort into trying to get progress on various fronts at home and abroad and all the time we had this media shit to swim through.

We flew to Hyderabad. Vajpayee and Musharraf had met yesterday but every account we had underlined how difficult any progress would be. TB was trying to get the focus on to two key principles, that Pakistan restate and more importantly show their seriousness in renouncing terrorism, and then India say yes to dialogue. TB was taken straight off by helicopter to look at some education projects while DM and I headed for the hotel to work up a proper script for TB to use post Vajpayee. David said he was shocked, even knowing what he did about our media, at the way they seemed to want us to fail, when we were actually dealing with political/diplomatic issues that were literally life and death. TB came back and, as often happened, his mood had improved by going out and about and talking to people outside the usual mix.

We flew up to Delhi where TB did Indian TV, some European
media. We got to the hotel, then a pre-meeting before Jaswant Singh [foreign affairs minister] arrived. He was pretty much signed up to TB’s general approach and agreed to try and get Vajpayee on that two-principles pitch. Several times he said we needed to know where the Taliban leadership were, implying that they were in Pakistan and the Pakistanis knew where they were. He said that Musharraf had implied to Vajpayee that they could turn the terrorist taps on and off. It was so like listening to the sides in Northern Ireland.

TB told him the Indians were on strong ground and provided they said they would have meaningful dialogue, they could use us to pressure Musharraf to take the first steps. He said the Americans had to hear loud and clear that India was prepared to have a dialogue and then the pressure on Pakistan over terrorism would grow. We left for the Hyderabad palace for the talks. TB pushed hard but got very little change out of Vajpayee. He was holding out for a lot more from the Pakistanis. He was pretty shrewd, and his total lack of embarrassment at long silences was a real strength. It meant others had to go running for him. He said he would only do a brief opening statement and then say in answer to questions that he was happy to go for dialogue but by the time it came to it he was so quiet and meandering that there was no clarity.

People were more interested in the huge contrast between his near-mystical manner and TB’s boyish enthusiasm. Also, bizarrely, he wore interpretation headphones the whole time even though the entire proceedings were conducted in English. He did in fact explicitly say that he would go for dialogue if the Pakistanis renounced terrorism in word and deed but it wasn’t done with the force and clarity required for our dunderheads to see it as a story, so it didn’t really fly. Tom [Kelly] and I did our best to push it as him giving TB a message to Musharraf, but it wasn’t easy.

At the official dinner, I was for some reason seated next to Vajpayee. He was an attentive host, but so quiet. I asked him whether it was a strength or a disadvantage to have such a quiet voice, and whether he used silence as a political weapon. He said he liked to think his authority came from within, as well as from the position he held. When he spoke in his native tongue, he could raise his voice to great levels and had regularly addressed crowds of half a million during the election. But words were precious, and there was little point speaking when nothing was to be said. He said Gandhi fasted to preserve his strength, and he too had learned the value of rest and peacefulness. TB was across the table talking to [Lal Krishna] Advani, the interior minister, and George Fernandes [defence minister]. At one point he joked across the table to
Vajpayee re me, ‘Be careful, he’s a bad man,’ and Vajpayee said ‘I don’t think so.’ Fiona called several times to keep me up to date with GB and the baby, which was obviously desperately sad.

Really, really heavy day. Breakfast with TB in Delhi. Both he and CB sensed that the GB situation re the baby was heading for disaster, and he said it will change GB, but he didn’t know whether for the better or the worse. It might give him a different sense of priorities, but it might also feed the dark side of his character. We were starting to get more criticism re TB focusing so much on foreign affairs. He felt the answer was to build the logical argument re why these issues mattered at home. We set off for the airport and boarded the C130 for Islamabad. TB and CB were up on the top deck sitting just behind the pilot who had a paper cup fixed by a rubber band to his head and ‘I am a Sunderland fan’ written on the cup. TB was worrying about how to get Musharraf on to a tougher line on terrorism. The flight was uncomfortable and it wasn’t easy to work. We landed, similar huge security, then left for the CIC.

I was travelling with David M and [Sir] Hilary Synnott, who knew his stuff. We got to the CIC, a nice, modern set-up but it did, as Pat [McFadden] had told me, feel more like a library than a communications hub. TB had a meeting with a group of Afghan women while I met Kenton Keith to discuss who should stay and who should go. Tanya [Joseph] had been winding me up about the American guy who called himself ‘the hawk’ and now I could see for myself why he had driven her so bonkers. He was the archetypal over-the-top US patriot. When TB thanked them all for the work they were doing, the hawk piped up ‘It’s easy, sir, when your children are at risk.’ They were a pretty good bunch though, just hadn’t gelled to make the difference I had hoped they would.

TB was on good form at the press conference. We were being lobbied by the American ambassador, Wendy Chamberlain, for the UK to become a mediator re Kashmir. TB was attracted, I could tell, but resisted nonetheless. I was worried about TB taking on yet another huge international commitment. She was adamant that only TB could sort this out. We went to the hotel and down to the pool to discuss how to handle the meetings. TB felt step one had to be Musharraf getting tougher with the terror groups, use that to press the Indians to engage. There had to be an absolute break with the Taliban and any of the groups they supported. But Pakistan also had to know there were benefits out of that.

We left for Musharraf’s place and most of the talks were one-on-one, afterwards described by TB as ‘very, very hard going’. I talked to [Shaukat] Aziz, the finance minister, who was very urbane and very charming, really trying to convince me that Musharraf wanted to break the terror groups. There was clearly a concerted effort going on as David M was getting the same message just as hard, hearing Musharraf had said before the December 13 attack on the Indian parliament that they would crack down on them. We were called in after a while and went over familiar ground on Afghanistan, then some bilateral stuff, and TB, clearly feeling the meeting was getting a bit rambling, suggested the two of them plus their press people should go through the difficult questions for the press conference. Musharraf went through what he intended to say, which was pretty much OK, then TB did the same and Musharraf clearly baulked at him saying ‘Support for terrorism must stop for talks to begin.’ He said he didn’t like it because it suggested that Pakistan and its government supported terrorism. We persuaded him that the best thing to do then was for him to say right at the top that he opposed terrorism in all its forms. We also persuaded him not to talk about Kashmir as a ‘freedom struggle’ because that would not be understood by our and by US opinion. Better to say it was an indigenous struggle. We spent an awful lot of time toing and froing on it but eventually he agreed.