Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: GICS Review, Iraq, Poll, War on Terror and Lakshmi Mittal.
GICS Review
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) drew journalists’ attention to a Written Ministerial Statement this morning from Douglas Alexander regarding the review of the Government Information and Communications Service (GICS), as recommended in a report by the Public Administration Select Committee last summer following events at DTLR. We had already confirmed that a review would take place and today’s Written Ministerial Statement would set out its membership and broad terms of reference.
Iraq
The PMOS advised journalists that the Greek Presidency’s proposal for a Special European Council in Brussels was likely to happen on Monday. The precise format was still being worked out. At the moment, the plan was to have a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers during the course of Monday, with Heads of Government arriving early evening for a meeting/dinner, and departing late Monday night. Asked whether the Prime Minister was intending to speak to any world leaders today, the PMOS said that there was nothing to flag up at the moment.
Asked to explain the purpose of the European Council next week, the PMOS said that the meeting would provide an opportunity for European countries to take stock of the situation in Iraq following Hans Blix’s report to the Security Council, due to be presented on Friday. We had maintained from the outset that the Prime Minister felt perfectly comfortable about Britain’s position in the debate. Questioned as to whether the EU, as an institution, had any bearing on the issue, the PMOS pointed out that some members of the EU were also members of NATO and the UN. Obviously it was important for Europe to underline an agreed position on Iraq - as indeed the General Affairs Council had done two weeks ago when EU Ministers meeting in Brussels had put out a statement emphasising that Saddam was being given a final opportunity to face up to his obligations. We would have to see how the next few days went as to what would be possible.
Questioned as to whether it was right to say that Spain and Bulgaria were the only countries to support our position on the Security Council, as Chancellor Schroeder had suggested this morning, the PMOS said that it was for the Germans to brief as they wished. He hadn’t seen their words. Our position on Iraq had not changed. We remained firmly of the view that Saddam Hussein must be disarmed and that he was in violation of his international obligations - and had been for some twelve years. We believed it was right to go down the UN route. It was clear that the UN process had integrity and Resolution 1441 provided us with the necessary route map. For example, Paragraph 4 talked about false statements or omissions, underlining that failure by Iraq at any time to comply ’shall constitute a further material breach’. Hans Blix was due to present a further report to the UN Security Council on Friday. As he had said yesterday - and as Jack Straw would say in his speech today - the number of inspectors was not the issue. It was Saddam’s attitude towards them. It would be easy to ‘flood’ Iraq with inspectors. However, with a country that size, the inspectors would still be unable to do their job if Saddam Hussein continued to refuse to co-operate.
Asked if the Prime Minister agreed with Donald Rumsfeld’s view that France, Germany and Belgium were isolated within NATO, the PMOS said that there was obviously a disagreement in NATO regarding Turkey’s request for prudent planning to protect its security. It went without saying that agreement would be preferable to disagreement. However, a lot of work was going on to try to resolve the differences of opinion. A further meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) was due to take place this morning. We would have to wait and see what happened. No one was saying that there weren’t differences. There were, and we acknowledged that they were problematic. At the same time, people should be careful not to write off NATO on the basis of events over the last forty-eight hours. It was an enduring institution. Asked if the Prime Minister would agree with the description of France, Germany and Belgium ’standing alone’ within NATO, the PMOS said that no one was hiding the fact that sixteen out of nineteen members of NATO held one point of view while three out of nineteen held a different one. That was obvious to all. Put to him that if Germany had been right to suggest that support for our position in the Security Council had fallen overnight to just a handful of countries then surely that was an indication that Germany, France and Belgium were not isolated within NATO, the PMOS said that he did not think it useful to play the numbers game in respect of the UN given Hans Blix had not yet presented his report. There was a process to be gone through and people would have to be a little patient and wait and see how things might move forward. It was clear that some countries were ‘not on the same page as us’. They were entitled to their views just as we were entitled to ours. That said, it was apparent that we were not in the minority and this was an emerging picture.
Asked if he would agree that France and Germany were playing a ‘dangerous game’ in terms of the future of NATO, the PMOS said that he was not understating the seriousness of the situation. No one was pretending it was anything but serious. Equally, people were working hard to try to resolve the differences, to narrow gaps and bring people together. In our view, that was where our energy was best focussed at the current time. Put to him that it was logical to conclude that we lived in more dangerous times given the Prime Minister’s declaration that the world was a safer place when the US and Europe stood shoulder to shoulder, the PMOS declined to give journalists the satisfaction of providing the headline they wanted. He had already answered the question in the way he wanted to answer it. These were complex, difficult issues. Questioned as to whether the Prime Minister had spoken to Lord Robertson in the last twenty-four hours, the PMOS said not as far as he was aware.
Asked if the Prime Minister was ready to review the idea of having a separate European defence identity with France as the principal partner, and whether we were able to continue to claim that such a body wouldn’t undermine NATO, especially given current circumstances, the PMOS said that no one was denying there was a dispute within NATO. Three countries held a different position about providing Turkey with - what we would regard as - prudent defensive planning. In our view, doing that did not take the likelihood of war any further. Others disagreed. In terms of European defence, the Prime Minister believed that it was important to continue to develop a separate European defence identity, as underlined in the very good progress made at the Anglo-French Summit in Le Touquet last week. Asked whether the Prime Minister continued to believe that France was a ‘trustworthy principal partner’ when France was behaving ’selfishly’ and in a ‘Gaullist’ manner by refusing to analyse world problems in the same way the Prime Minister was, the PMOS said that it was clear that the UK and France held differing views at the current time. However, we would wait and see how matters progressed in the days and weeks to come. The Prime Minister believed that it was important to develop a separate European defence identity for peace-keeping and crisis management purposes in cases where Europe wished to act outside NATO, but obviously with due respect to NATO assets. That remained the case.
Put to him that events over the last forty-eight hours or so showed the problem of having a common foreign policy, the PMOS said that no one was pretending there weren’t differences between EU countries. Clearly there were. The media was reporting them in full and we understood why they were doing so. We acknowledged there were serious issues. It was our job to help try to resolve those differences and move the big issues forward in a way which could achieve the maximum consensus. A process was ongoing. While it was tempting for people to jump ahead, he would urge them to wait for Hans Blix’s report to the Security Council on Friday and see how the international community responded afterwards. As Dr Blix himself had said yesterday, the issue was not the number of inspectors in Iraq, but the attitude of the Iraqi regime towards them. That was important.
Questioned as to whether the Prime Minister would consider the intervention by France and Germany regarding the suggestion to bring in additional weapons inspectors to be a helpful contribution at this juncture or an unconstructive one, the PMOS said that it was what it was. He pointed out that both the French and Germans had said that there was no ‘plan’. It seemed to us that it was simply an amplification of the French Foreign Minister’s reaction to Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN last Wednesday. Both France and Germany had said that the other elements of the Der Spiegel article, which had been the genesis for this story, were not accurate. Put to him that the Prime Minister surely did not think it helpful for world leaders to ‘muddy the water’ with only days to go before Dr Blix’s important report to the Security Council, the PMOS said that France, Germany and others clearly held one view about increasing the number of weapons inspectors, while we, together with a significant number of other countries, held another. We would argue that unless Saddam changed his attitude towards co-operation, an increase in the number of international civil servants - no matter how talented and able they might be - would not be able to crack the problem. Put to him that Saddam had changed his attitude by enabling scientists to be interviewed without the presence of Iraqi ‘minders’ and also by permitting the use of U2 planes, the PMOS said that people should not confuse a ‘drip-drip’ of what appeared to be concessions with full co-operation. He drew journalists’ attention to a quote from Saddam yesterday as reported on Iraq television saying, "How can we allow U2 aircraft to fly in our airspace to photograph our air defences and give information about them without the aim of destroying them?" So, perhaps all was not as it seemed with Saddam’s ‘permission’ to allow the inspectors to use the U2s in their work. In any event, Hans Blix would update us all on Friday.
Asked the Prime Minister’s view about the stance that Russia appeared to have adopted on this matter, the PMOS said that there was a continuing dialogue amongst the international community. It would not be helpful for us to give an up-to-the-minute view on where each country stood. We accepted that not everyone was coming at it from exactly the same perspective. Security Council members had signed up unanimously to Resolution 1441 which gave Saddam a final opportunity to disarm. It underlined his obligation to co-operate and also set out what would happen if he didn’t. In the Prime Minister’s view, it therefore followed that if the inspections process showed that Saddam was not abiding by his obligations, it was clear that the UN had to face up to its responsibilities. Ultimately, however, we would have to wait and see how things moved forward in the days to come. Asked why communications between the Prime Minister and President Putin appeared to have fallen silent, the PMOS said that he would disagree. He reminded journalists that the Prime Minister had spoken to President Putin both before and after his visit to Washington.
Asked to clarify the Prime Minister’s view of an ‘unreasonable veto’ by a UN member regarding the issue of military action against Iraq, the PMOS said that people needed to be a little patient. The Prime Minister had set out his view concerning the desirability of a second UN Resolution. Dr Blix would give his report on Friday and we would move forward from there. Asked whether the Prime Minister had been referring to the P5 or the entire Security Council when he had talked in his Newsnight interview about the need to achieve ‘majority’ support for a second Resolution, the PMOS said that there was arithmetic necessary - boringly, he admitted - to get a Resolution passed. He again cautioned people against getting too ahead of themselves at this point. We believed that the UN process had integrity. We were serious about it, but remained strongly of the view that it had to be a way of dealing with the issue of Saddam’s disarmament, not avoiding it. Iraq’s actions thus far did not provide the confidence which the international community needed in respect of Saddam’s obligation to co-operate, and more importantly disarm.
Questioned as to whether we were asking the international community to base its judgement entirely on what Hans Blix and Dr ElBaradei said in their report on Friday, the PMOS said that the inspectors had been mandated by the UN to disarm Saddam peacefully or else to satisfy the UN that he longer possessed WMD. They had to reach their view based on evidence presented to them rather than ‘evidence’ based on assertion by the Iraqi administration. It was then for the Security Council to assess and come to judgements on what the inspectors presented to them. There had been one report from the weapons inspectors which had underlined their concerns about the Iraqi regime’s non-co-operation. It was precisely that point about co-operation which was integral to the essence of Resolution 1441. It was qualitatively different from other Resolutions Saddam had flouted. Asked if he was saying that the integrity of the inspectors’ report was crucial, the PMOS said that that of course what they were saying was important. That was a statement of fact. We had always been clear about the importance of this process.
Poll
Asked the Prime Minister’s view of the Times poll today which showed that public support for the Government had slumped because of its stance on Iraq, the PMOS said that polls came and went. They filled people up quite quickly but left them feeling pretty hungry soon afterwards. He pointed out that the poll contained some interesting contradictory flows. The Prime Minister was doing what he was doing because he believed it was right. He had set out the reasons many times before. As he had said in the House, being a leader meant having to take decisions and make judgements with which other people might disagree. That was part of the job. But he believed that what he was doing was right for the reasons he had set out many times.
War on Terror
Questioned as to whether there had been a change in the level of threat following reports that troops had been drafted in to guard Heathrow airport from a terrorist attack, the PMOS said that since there was an ongoing police operation, it would not be helpful to say a huge amount about this matter. As the Prime Minister had made clear in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet last November, the Government had to take judgements depending on circumstances. It should therefore not come as any great surprise that the threat level would rise and fall from time to time and security alongside. He repeated he was unable to say much about the ongoing police operation for operational and security reasons. However, he would underline that the Government and security authorities were taking whatever action they believed was necessary to protect the public.
In answer to further questions, the PMOS said the public recognised that the threat from international terrorism was real and that the Government had to make judgements and respond accordingly. If, on the advice of the authorities, we felt it appropriate to close down any part of our infrastructure or to issue a specific warning, then we would obviously do so without hesitation. As the Prime Minister and Ministers had underlined in the past, there were fine judgements which had to be made. This could never be an exact science. He was not pretending today that the fact the army had been deployed in this capacity for the first time since 1994 was not newsworthy. Of course it was. However, we had to make sure that the right balance was struck by taking action that was both necessary and proportionate. We did not want to do the terrorists’ job for them. Asked if we would advise people not to travel, the PMOS said that Heathrow was open and flights were continuing to operate.
Asked what action the Government would be taking against Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed in the light of his warning that his followers were prepared to act as suicide bombers in the UK, the PMOS said that the authorities would continue to look very carefully at what individuals were saying and whether it fell within the law. Put to him that it seemed to be clear that Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed was guilty of incitement, the PMOS said that he was not qualified to make such a judgement. Questioned as to whether the Government would be prepared to authorise some sort of ‘exemplary’ action against him, the PMOS said that he was not going to pretend that comments which certain people had been making were not distasteful. Clearly they were. However, there was an issue as to whether what people said fell on one side of the law or the other.
Lakshmi Mittal
Asked if the Prime Minister was aware of a bid by Lakshmi Mittal for the Polish steel industry - and if so whether he would support it, the PMOS said that he was not aware if the Prime Minister knew about it, if indeed that was the case. He personally wasn’t.
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