EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF AN INTERVIEW GIVEN BY THE FOREIGN SECRETARY, MR ROBIN COOK, FOR GMTV, LONDON, SUNDAY, 20 DECEMBER 1998
INTERVIEWER:
Is the world a safer place? I asked the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, to assess the impact of the military campaign and to explain what happens next.
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
We are quite clear that the military campaign will have been effective in setting back Saddam's programmes for weapons of terror by several years and by sharply removing his capacity to threaten his neighbours with a military machine that keeps him in power. It is very important when we have come to an end of the military campaign that we should then launch a diplomatic campaign. We will be putting forward a strategy of containment for Saddam. First of all, we will be making it perfectly clear that a credible threat will remain and that if Saddam attempts to return to developing a capacity to threaten his region and the world with chemical and biological weapons, then there will be the military power to stop him. We will be making sure there is effective monitoring to ensure that we know what he is up to and that he is not going to be able to develop those weapons without our being warned of it. He is not going to be allowed to do this in secret as he has been trying to do.
But there is a wider objective and that is to make sure that the Saddam regime remains isolated in the world. We can build up contact and dialogue with those in Iraq who would wish to oppose him. Our objective will be to make sure that we have built up as broad as possible a consensus in the international community against Saddam and have made sure that Saddam himself remains as isolated as possible both in the world and also within Iraq itself.
INTERVIEWER:
But does it shock you that there are still people on the international stage, even within governments, who are still prepared to see Saddam as somebody they can do business with?
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
I could not have been Foreign Secretary for almost two years and still be shocked at the reaction of governments, no. I understand that some governments approach this from an entirely different perspective. The task for us now after the military action is to build as much of a consensus as we can against Saddam Hussein. Some of the governments who have had their reserves about military action are also quite clear about the nature of Saddam Hussein and I would, yes, be shocked if we cannot build a broad coalition and consensus of containment of Saddam to make sure that he is not going to develop a credible weapons capacity and threaten the world or a military machine once again to threaten his neighbours. I think we can do that. I am quite clear that that there is an opening for us to build a consensus of the international community which keeps Saddam isolated.
INTERVIEWER:
But let us look at some of the fault-lines in that diplomatic strategy. Within Europe, there are a number of governments who believe you are just too close to the United States in this matter.
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
In Europe, we have had enormous support. Many of the ministers of Europe and the governments of Europe have come out not only in agreement with the analysis I have given of the threat which Saddam poses but also specifically in support of the military action. Capital after capital in Europe has made it plain that the reason why this military action had to be taken is the action of Saddam Hussein. We had particularly strong support, for instance, from the new government in Germany and I will be meeting the foreign minister of Germany in London tomorrow when we will be discussing this very problem. So I don't see a problem in Europe in building a consensus around the kind of strategy that I have outlined.
INTERVIEWER:
Europe may be manageable but there is a much bigger challenge in the United Nations - Russia and China out-and-out opposed.
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
First of all, in the Security Council we had overwhelming support and in any free vote of the Security Council we would have won by an overwhelming majority. You are right that Russia and China resisted the military action but I think also there will be a willingness in Russia - and already it has been clear from our conversations with them - to look at how we build a consensus for the future and it is very important that we achieve that. We want Russia to be with us, we don't want this in any way to become a basis of division with Russia and indeed Russia itself understands there are a whole number of areas where it is in Russia's own interest to have a positive relationship with Europe and with the United States. I think together we can find common ground in which you can make sure that Saddam is contained. In the last analysis, Moscow is not acting as an apologist for Saddam, they know his regime and they know also it is in their interest to make sure he doesn't get chemical and biological weapons because they are an awful lot nearer to them than we are.
INTERVIEWER:
The Muslim World is less supportive than it was in 1990/91. How do you reassure them that Saddam is the enemy?
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
The statements from the Arab and Islamic World have overwhelmingly been statements of very measured restraint. We have of course spoken intensively to so many of the governments in the Arab World about what we are doing and there is a very strong degree of understanding among the governments because they know that Saddam's weapons of terror, if they were ever used, would be used against them. Let us not turn this into a confrontation between the West and the Arab World. If you look at those who have been victims of Saddam's aggression and Saddam's genocide, the people he kills are Muslims. He himself has killed tens of thousands of Muslims in Iran and the Kurdish areas; he took away 600 people from Kuwait and they have never been heard of again. There are many people around the region who understand only too well that Saddam has oppressed Muslim people.
There is of course one issue which I think it is very important that we get across throughout the Arab World and that is the extent to which we have sought in all we do to try and actually help the plight of the Iraqi people. Britain, for instance, doubled the oil-for-food programme so that Saddam could pay for food and medicines and there are no sanctions against food and medicines for Iraq. If the Iraqi people go short of these things, it is because of Saddam, not because of sanctions, and in the course of the military action we have taken the greatest possible care to make sure we target only military installations, not the civilian infrastructure. I will want to work with the Arab World and with the Islamic leaders to see if there are ways in which we can try and make our humanitarian effort more effective so that we can actually defeat Saddam's attempt to obstruct our work to get aid through to the people of his country.
INTERVIEWER:
But doesn't your stated desire to see the back of Saddam once and for all make that diplomatic strategy much more difficult?
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
No, not at all. There is nobody who would be keener to get rid of Saddam than the Iraqi people; they may not have a free press or free television which can show them what Saddam does but they know it. There cannot be a village anywhere in Iraq in which people did not disappear under Saddam's reign of brutality and they would be very pleased if they could get rid of Saddam. We have got to be very careful about how we approach this and we cannot invite his people to rise up against Saddam because we know the terrible consequences for them were they to fail. But we will want to maintain dialogue with the opposition groups and the people of Iraq themselves are not in any way going to feel that it is an anti-Islamic claim that we should try and get rid of Saddam. The whole world would be a better place and the Islamic World would be a safer place.
INTERVIEWER:
Should the diplomatic strategy fail, then the tools of war will be rolled out again?
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
We will be maintaining a credible threat against Saddam. We don't want to have to use that threat in the future. I very much hope that our diplomatic strategy will build a consensus which will be effective against Saddam and remember, he will only confront the United Nations if he feels he can split world opinion. But we are not going to let Saddam continue to develop weapons of mass destruction or get them back to the point where he was in a short period, of being able to deploy them. If we were to allow him to do that, we would not be leaving peace undisturbed, we would be making it certain that he himself would break the peace by using those weapons. Remember, until sanctions came along Saddam was in power for only 12 years and in those 12 years for 9 of them he was at war with one or other of his neighbours. If sanctions had not been there, he would have been at war with one of them in the recent years.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
