The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (88 page)

Jonathan and I continually emphasised we needed the second resolution. We had seven definite votes still, but Condi was less confident re Chile and Mexico. She said [Vicente] Fox [President of Mexico] was in a state of torture because it was such a big thing to stand up against the US. They basically wanted by Tuesday/Wednesday to say we had exhausted every effort and now the diplomatic window had closed. We said if we got the majority for a second resolution, even with vetoes we would have to go through it, including with the timetable. Andy Card said he feared the president’s response would be ‘Here we go, another final opportunity, a final final opportunity and this time we really mean it.’ I said TB’s job was on the line and we did not want to lose him. ‘No, nor do we,’ said Condi. I think our concern was probably deeper. I called Jack Cunningham [former Cabinet minister] who was doing the media in the morning. He was scathing re Short, Chris Smith, Kilfoyle, Dobson. There were two groups ranged against TB, he said – those who never wanted him, and those who felt he didn’t share
their own high view of themselves. But the mood out there was not good, and this was a ‘dangerous moment’ for TB. I listened to Clare’s interview and the disgusting self-indulgent whine made the words even worse to the ear than they were in print on the transcript. It was clear she was asking to go, but wanting the moral high ground when it happened.

Another rash of ministerial calls after it went out – JP, JR, JS, DB – all saying she was an outrage and there had to be decisive leadership about this. JP said to her afterwards that he had been sitting in the room with TB as he called some of these leaders and she totally undercut his strategy. Phil Webster [
Times
] told me every single broadsheet had been planning to lead on TB trying to go the UN route, and then Clare does this. I listened in later to the TB/Bush call. TB started by saying he was ‘fighting on all fronts’. ‘Attaboy,’ came the reply, a bit too patronisingly for my tastes. TB said one of his ministers was threatening to resign, also that Chirac told Lagos that the Africans were ‘in the bag’. I hope that’s bullshit, said Bush. TB had spoken to the four leaders who made up the 8 plus 1. [Pervez] Musharraf [President of Pakistan] was with us but it was difficult for him. Cameroon said absolutely. Guinea’s foreign minister coming tomorrow. [José Eduardo] Dos Santos [President of Angola] solid.

TB was doing most of the talking, said he felt Lagos was trying to move. We had been working on the idea of laying out a series of tests re what we meant by full co-operation. He felt Bush needed to work some more on Fox. He felt if we could get them to accept the idea of the tests, other countries would also come with us. But Bush said he was already putting enormous pressure on Mexico. He said he had also been twisting Lagos’ arm, ‘but gently because I respect you’. GWB said he could be in no doubt that if there was a vote, they would have to use it. TB said the Chileans felt any tests should be agreed through Blix. Bush not happy. Bush said Saddam was very adept at exploiting weakness and Blix was weak. These countries need to see we want to do this peacefully. He wants the vote to go through but not on an unreasonable basis.

TB said the public opinion problem stemmed from people feeling the US wanted a war. We have to put up the genuine tests of disarmament, show the determination to try to do this peacefully. Bush said he had never come across a situation where the dividing line between success and failure was so narrow. He said we want it done peacefully, or any other way. His tone was very different to TB’s. Bush was talking the diplomatic talk whilst clearly irritated by the whole thing. His worry was that we were negotiating with ourselves, that
we get a resolution with a timeframe, everything they want, and we get nothing for it. He said he couldn’t believe Chirac said he had the Africans in the bag. ‘I can,’ said TB. ‘I have a lot of experience of them.’ He [Bush] was clearly aware of how tough things were getting for TB. He said if the swing countries didn’t vote with us ‘my last choice is for your government to go down. That is the absolute last thing I want to have happen. I would rather go it alone than have your government fall.’ ‘I appreciate that,’ said TB. ‘I really mean that,’ said Bush. TB said it was also important he understood that he really believed in what they were trying to do. Bush – ‘I know that but I am not going to see your government fall on this.’

TB said ‘I’ve got our troops there too. If I can’t get it through Parliament, we fall, and that is not exactly the regime change I want. We have to work out what Mexico and Chile need.’ They agreed to speak again to Lagos and Fox. TB said we were in high-risk, high-reward territory. Bush said he was being eroded domestically by inactivity. He also said he felt the hardest part would be after Saddam. Then Bush did a number on the changes in the Arab world that could follow. TB said the biggest concern in not going with the UN was the lack of support if things went wrong. [US General] Tommy Franks had said ninety per cent of precision bombs are precise. That leaves ten per cent. But Bush was left in no doubt TB would be with him when the time came. Bush said ‘I’m not going to let you down. Hang in there buddy. You are doing great.’ What had been interesting was that Bush listened far more intently to TB. TB did not make too much of his own problems, and was stressing he thought we were doing the right thing.

Needless to say Clare was leading the news, amid lots of assumptions we would sack her. The papers, as expected, were fairly grim. I went up to the flat where David was briefing TB on Jeremy Greenstock’s meeting with Blix. Blix was just about up for the clusters plan. TB wanted Jeremy to work on Blix and [Dimitri] Perricos [Blix’s deputy] to get them signed up to it. It was the only show in town and the only one likely to lead to a majority of the UNSC. He was still working on Lagos and worried about him. Re Clare he said he viewed it as an act of personal betrayal to do what she did, without warning, when he was in the midst of negotiating on this. TB’s real anger with the French had been the sending of mixed messages to Saddam, and that is what Clare was doing too. He was minded to sack her but on the other hand felt there was no point in doing anything other than
being totally hard-headed and ruthless about the issue, in which she was something of a sideshow.

I got Jack Cunningham, Bev Hughes [Home Office minister] and Alan Milburn up all making the point that it was odd to do this on the radio rather than speak to the PM about the threat to resign. JP spoke to her twice last night and again this morning and sensed she had concluded we were definitely going to war and she was going to position herself to resign with maximum damage. He even wondered whether she wasn’t setting herself up as a possible challenger to GB. I took JP up to the flat. He said it was on balance not sensible to help turn her into a martyr, which is what she wanted, but instead leave her hanging in the wind for a while. He went off to speak to her again and later TB spoke to her, told her she had committed an act of gross betrayal, that he was at a total loss to understand how she could do that. Her defence was that she felt in recent weeks his approach with her was to listen politely but take no notice. He said to her who do you think got us down the UN route, who is the one still pushing on that, who is the one trying to use this to get the MEPP going again? She was totally beyond the pale. He had decided however that he was not going to sack her. JP and I were usually at the front of the ‘get rid of her’ queue but agreed that on this it would be a mistake. JP said it was all about her position, nothing else. She did say sorry at the end of her conversation, but in that whiney, drippy way that was designed to convey she was sorry that he couldn’t see things as clearly as she did.

Jack C was excellent on the media. TB and I prepared for the ITV programme which was pretty dire because the usual so-called representative audience was packed with the usual activists. TB meeting with Hilary A, John R, David Triesman. Hilary said that if we didn’t get a second resolution, or if there was a French veto, we were in trouble. So the PLP was willing to subcontract foreign policy to Chirac? We headed over to the FCO for the ITV special. I knew the moment we arrived the audience would be a problem. You could smell the mood. They were not so-called ordinary people but a group put together to give TB as hard a time as possible. Trevor McDonald didn’t chair it very well and the whole thing became not just difficult on the substance, but also pretty undignified. When all is said and done he is the prime minister and one or two of them were talking to him like he was a piece of shit on the pavement. He kept calm and dealt with it fine, deciding in the end just to absorb it all but as he came out he gave me a look that could kill. It was a pretty shoddy operation and Peter Stothard [former
Times
editor], who was following us around for the
Times
magazine with [photographer] Nick Danziger, reckoned
that not only was the audience slanted, but they had wound them up beforehand.

Then a meeting to discuss whether we could get going on a revised amendment with the challenges to Saddam. [Igor] Ivanov had said the Russians would veto and Chirac did the same. Pakistan indicated abstention. TB told Lagos that if Chile and others moved, the French would pull back but that looked doubtful. Chirac was clearly up for the kill on this, really felt he could damage TB and alarm some of his traditional allies. Chirac was now out with the veto message. TB was on and off the phone to Lagos who said he was eighty per cent there but worried about France and Russia. TB spoke to Greenstock, then at 9.50 did a long call with Bush. GWB kicked off ‘Did you save your Cabinet woman?’ TB said she was still in for the moment, that she met every description of self-indulgence ‘but we have to carry on’. TB did most of the talking, set out where he thought all the different players were. GWB reckoned seven votes solid ‘locked up’ but Pakistan and the Latins were difficult. He felt Chirac was trying to get us to the stage where we would not put to a vote because we would be so worried about losing.

TB said he felt Lagos wanted to come, but he needed to be able to say he had achieved something, even winning a few days more. But I could sense in his voice and the manner of the discussion that Bush was less emollient than yesterday. He felt Fox would do whatever Chile did. TB said Lagos wanted to come with us but he was very nervous. TB had spoken to him several times. He was biting but wanted to know what the inspectors would say. Lagos was asking do we have to accept military action if he fails these tests? Bush asked re timeframe. TB said they would want to kick us back a few days as a way of showing they got something out of this.

The French and Russian strategy was to play it so hard that we end up thinking we cannot even dream of getting to nine or ten votes. But TB said if we can shift Chile and Mexico, we change the weather. If we can make these tests the basis of an ultimatum, and then the French and Russians have to veto, with Chile and Mexico behind us, and the numbers right on the UN, I think I have a fighting chance of getting it through the Commons. Bush was worried about rolling in more time. TB held his ground, said the Latins had to be able to say they got something out of all this talking to us. They need to be able to point to something that they won last minute that explains why they finally supported us. Bush said the first resolution was also tough – total and complete disarmament. ‘We can’t weaken.’ 1441, he said, we should just put it down again.

TB felt the second resolution was important and this was the best
way to get it. He felt that we needed UN backing, or at least a majority, on the assumption France and Russia would veto. Bush said ‘Let me be frank. The second resolution is for the benefit of Great Britain. We want it so we can go ahead together.’ His worry was that we would get rolled over on timings and also the inspectors would get used by Saddam again. There was something crazy and random about what was going on. It was a pure accident of timing that suddenly made Chile and Mexico the focus of so much diplomacy, TB working on Lagos, Bush on Fox. TB said when this is over, we need to take a long hard look at the reality of how the UN works. These countries suddenly had a lot of power but seemed unsure how to use it. TB felt the Russians, French and Germans now had a bit of a swagger, felt they were showing that the Americans can be taught a lesson. TB felt if we swung over Chile, Mexico would come, then we could go to Putin and say let’s be reasonable.

Bush said he’d had a bad conversation with the Turks. [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan [new President of Turkey] had basically given him a lecture on world events when Bush called for [military] overflight rights. He said he would have to go to Parliament. Bush said ‘It was not friend-to-friend, far from it. Maybe the interpreter didn’t get the nuances, I don’t know, but it was a bad call, no camaraderie.’ He said again we must not retreat from 1441 and we cannot keep giving them more time.

I was by and large signed up for the policy but it did make me feel a bit sick the extent to which our problems were US-created, and our politics now so dominated by their approach. TB had not really wavered at all but as the time got nearer the politics got tougher. Bush said ‘It’s time to do this. We have sent tough signals and he knows that. So no more deals.’ He had told Rumsfeld to move the ships. We had Schroeder coming over and Bush told TB the Germans needed to know the real lie of the land. He said he took Schroeder’s election antics personally.

Bush said again he had no problem with TB presenting him as the US hard cop against his persuading soft cop. He then said ‘It makes me sick the way these people are trying to divide us so that we help save Saddam’s skin.’ Bush said ‘If you ran for president over here, you’d whip my ass.’ Laughter. TB said he was sure we were doing the right thing and we had to see it through but it was going to be really tough. Bush signed off with ‘Hang in there friend.’

Growing sense of crisis, what with the Chirac veto, talk of a challenge to TB and the dynamic moving away from us the whole time. The press was about as OK as it could be re Clare, but generally things
were getting more not less difficult. TB was seeing the Portuguese PM [José Manuel Barroso]. I missed the start because I was doing the morning meeting, but went in for the end, and said there was the case for going at the French with the concept of an ‘unreasonable veto’. TB laughed and said to Barroso ‘He is the Roy Keane of the operation.’ When he said that Barroso would be more diplomatic, I said I know, because he is the Eusébio [great Portuguese footballer]. The doorstep was fine, TB saying Chirac risked letting Saddam off the hook by saying they would veto ‘
quelles que soient les circonstances
’ [whatever the circumstances]. After Barroso left we had a meeting with JP, JR and Hilary A to try to get more politics into all this. The party was going to be important and we were neglecting things.