14 JULY 2004

SIR JEREMY GREENSTOCK GCMG

  Q40 Mr Colman: Listening to this, about three weeks ago I was in Bosnia Herzegovina and I was thinking about the responsibilities of the UN troops in Srebenecia for the terrible massacre there and the terrible things that went on in Bosnia Herzegovina. Clearly, the answer is not always to have the UN involvement, maybe. In the case of Bosnia Herzegovina it is very interesting that that went forward and has been relatively successful, if you like, in terms of particularly the UK and the United States, although there are arguments around this. If I can bring us back to the role of the United Nations in Iraq, you have mentioned the very high state of preparedness that there was prior to the war in March 2003, and I can verify that, having met with the senior people of OCHA in Cyprus in March 2003. You talked about the work that was done by UNHCR in terms of preparing for what was thought to be very high numbers of potential refugees that would be leaving Iraq, and they did not leave. I was extremely impressed at the high level of readiness of the UN agencies that came in as soon as the war came to an end. Given that you said that the UN institutions pulled out after 19 August after the terrible bombing of the Canal Hotel and the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello, to what extent had the UN got in prior to 19 August? Were they operating in Kurdistan? Were they operating in the centre? Were they operating in the south? Was UNDP there on the ground working on the waterworks? Was UNICEF working on health? To what extent did it happen? After 19 August you said that they all pulled out, but did you mean only in the Central Baghdad area or did they continue to operate in Kurdistan? Did they continue to operate in the south? What has the UN been doing, if you like, over this last year and a bit since the end of the official part of the conflict and the end of the war?

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I arrived in Baghdad on 12 September 2003, so I did not have any personal experience of the UN operating on the ground before 19 August, but I understand that both in Kurdistan, Baghdad and the south the UN was building up its teams and there were people in Sergio Vieira de Mello's office and in the Canal Hotel who were directing the humanitarian and service side of the UN as well as the political side. They were building up their teams and people were beginning to come into the Basra area and form sub-offices there. Probably UNICEF, UNHCR and the other most forward UN agencies were beginning to form teams in that area. After 19 August the work was frozen in shock, first of all, and then gradually during the next few weeks the international staff of those agencies were withdrawn and work on the ground was left in the hands of the national staff, that is Iraqis on the ground, to try to keep some sort of activity turning over at a very low level. I think during the months that I was there that activity reduced to a dribble but some work was done by some very brave Iraqi national staff.

  Q41 Mr Colman: Even in Kurdistan?

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Including in Kurdistan, but I think there were probably more international staff in the north than elsewhere. In the end there were none elsewhere. Lakhdar Brahimi and other members of the UN Department of Political Affairs came back on visits in the early months of 2004 but nobody came back to reside there. Ross Mountain was appointed acting Special Representative of the Secretary General working from an office in Cyprus eventually, although it took some time to set up after his appointment, and he too came on visits. I am not aware, I am out of it now so you would need to ask the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development for details for this, but even up to now there are very few international staff workers of the UN on the ground because the necessary security arrangements are not in place to protect them and the Secretariat of the United Nations has very strong feelings about the need for UN staff not to expose themselves to further risk in Iraq. In effect, after 19 August the UN international operation came to a grinding halt and has not been restored on the soil of Iraq.

  Q42 Mr Colman: That was not on the basis of not having a humanitarian mandate, that was purely on the basis of security?

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: If you look at the terms of Security Council Resolutions 1511 and 1546, the first last October and the second in May of this year, I think, you will see that the Secretary General is mandated to do certain things on the ground, including international humanitarian work, if circumstances permit, which is a loose reference to the security situation. So far the Secretary General has judged that circumstances do not permit.

  Q43 Mr Colman: The situation is the same as in Afghanistan in terms of the humanitarian mandate of the United Nations to be carried out and has been so over the last year, year and a bit, since the end of the conflict?

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, it is comparable.

  Q44 John Barrett: Am I right in thinking that you said to my colleague, Mr Robathan, that the ICRC report was never presented to your office?

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I said that and that is the case.

  Q45 John Barrett: There was a meeting on 26 February with Ambassador Bremer and officials from your office when the ICRC formally presented the report on the treatment of detainees by the coalition. This was then reported to London the following day. The meeting did take place.

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I tried to tell the story and, therefore, make the distinction. The ICRC never told me, with my separate responsibility, that this report existed. My legal advisor was asked at the last minute to attend the meeting but the ICRC did not give him a separate copy of the report. He got a copy of the report from the Americans and established that there were things that the British Government had to follow up and ensured that the report went into the channels that would follow that up. He did not see the need, and probably correctly, as far as the British part of it was concerned to involve me personally in the following up of the ICRC report by the British Government. Because I was not brought into it that does not mean to say that the British Government did not get the report, at least the paragraphs about the British behaviour, and follow it up and, indeed, follow-up action was taken, investigations were pursued and disciplinary action was taken where necessary, as I understand it, but you will have to ask the Ministry of Defence.

  Q46 Chairman: Just looking very briefly to the future. Sir Jeremy, what was your impression of the potential for elected local government in Iraq? How are the institutions going to emerge from the ground up? Do you see any prospects for that happening in the near future?

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I think the reconstruction of local government in Iraq is extremely important. Iraq is potentially quite a sophisticated society by the standards of its region. There are civil society institutions existing even from the Saddam regime, although they were not hugely active. They have reconstituted their activity very quickly. Local government is the same. There are doctors, lawyers, academics, farmers and women's groups that immediately got down to activity and started to re-form. They are desperate for funds; they are desperate for international assistance and contacts. I think that Iraq has a good potential for re-forming civil society in a way which will help the growth of democratic institutions. As for local government, there is a long history of local government, of tribal government, of municipal and provincial government, which the CPA fostered and, in some instances, renewed and in many areas there have been actual democratic elections for mayors and governors and provincial councils. Paul Bremer ensured that there was a good deal of activity in these areas and there were CPA officials in every provincial capital pursuing this. I am sure that the current Iraqi interim and, later, transitional governments will pursue this, it is what Iraqis want and they have a very strong sense of devolution and local administration. There is a lot for the international community to plug into in terms of assisting local government.

  Q47 Chris McCafferty: Sadly, there appears to be a rising tide of violence against women in Iraq. There are some perceived difficulties about getting all women registered to vote, and I am thinking in terms of the full democratic elections which we hope will take place next year. In your view, is that the case? Do you think that some special mechanisms perhaps could be put in place to ensure that women (a) can register so that they have a vote, and (b) will be able to vote when the time comes?

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Again, you raise two subjects that may be linked but are distinct. The violence against women to some extent has been endemic in Iraqi society under the Saddam regime and it is to be regretted if that tide of violence has not declined. I am not sure that it has risen further in the last few months.

  Q48 Chris McCafferty: Perhaps they are more aware of it.

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I think they are more aware of it, they are fed up that it is continuing. We, the coalition, were trying very hard to reduce it. In the end it is a matter of community law and order as opposed to anti-terrorism law and order that needs to be pursued more heavily and I am sure that the Iraqi security forces and police forces are doing that. Certainly when the police forces were under the training and direction of the British and American police officers, and we had a particularly courageous and senior and able officer in Assistant Chief Constable Douglas Brand doing that, a lot of attention was paid to women's issues. On the voting side, I think we have achieved in the transitional administration law and regulations quite a success in getting women recognised as needing to be candidates in the election, in setting down in the law a figure of 25% for women's representation in the new National Assembly and ensuring outside that, through the activity of the Democratic Institutions Section of the CPA, that women's groups are formed to take part in political and not just community and social action, and women are very enthusiastic in following it up. It does depend on security, so you have correctly linked the two issues, but there is an enormous amount of thought, money and activity that has gone into it.

  Q49 Hugh Bayley: You told us earlier that providing security is the single most important thing to do because other things flow from that: the ability of development agencies to do their work; the ability of the occupying powers to fulfil their obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Therefore, it seems with hindsight that one of the mistakes in the way that the post-conflict situation has been handled is that not enough troops have been put on the ground. Is that your view? If so, how do you assess the requirements for troops in these sorts of situations? Finally, are the troops that we have and the Americans, who have high tech, well armed troops, the sort of troops who are best for dealing with post-conflict situations, or might one do better with more low tech troops from less developed countries? Greater numbers of low tech troops.

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It is my view that not enough troops were present on the ground for the post-conflict situation. I believe that one of the lessons we need to learn from this whole story is that you need to over-insure in the post-conflict period as in the conflict. I think this story has been taken up in the American context by the re-examination of the advice of General Shinseki who said before the conflict began to his bosses in the Pentagon, "You are going to need", I think it was "500,000 troops" or several hundred thousand troops, and that advice was not accepted. Perhaps that should be left to develop, and I hope it will develop, as a debate in the American system. That just happens to be my personal view, for what that is worth, you can take more professional views from the Ministry of Defence and from Government ministers. I think from a distant view the British troops were properly equipped. I am not talking about the availability of equipment, I am talking about the instruments that they had at their disposal for the job that they were doing. They did do it in a different style. Remember, they actually put down their equipment, took off their helmets and flak jackets and, as it were, went amongst the people. I think that the military lesson to be learned there may be, but it needs more professional military assessment, that taking that risk in the early stages saves lives of your soldiers later. It was predictable that in other areas the use of heavy force against pinpoint attacks or pinpoint threats against the coalition was in some respects counterproductive and dangerous in that the resentment caused amongst the wider area that felt the force of the attack, or the response, produced greater resentment and anger and, later, actual attacks. Perhaps Fallujah is the history of that, although I think Fallujah is the worst place so you cannot say that was the average result, that was the worst result. In Samarah, in Baquba and Tikrit, Ramadi and elsewhere, it was clear that after some fairly firm treatment that things began to improve. I also think that there needs to be the training at least of parts of your military machine to do the post-conflict situation and not apply conflict methods to a post-conflict situation. That is another lesson that must be learned in detail. The American military in particular have not gone down that route up to this point in history. I think the British have learned a lot from their colonial, Northern Ireland and other experiences. I commented earlier on the fact that we had a less difficult area in the south than the Americans did, so I am not making a pejorative American/British assessment here, I am just saying that we have had different experiences and our military have different training. It is not a high tech, low tech thing, it is a matter of what you use on the ground in a particular situation. You must have the high tech capability to make sure that you cannot be strategically defeated but you must have low tech, tactical practices that suit the situation on the ground. That is the distinction to make.

  Q50 Mr Robathan: Sir Jeremy, I am sorry to bother you with this again, I am being rather tiresome, but I am really somewhat dissatisfied with your response about the ICRC report. I have in front of me a letter from the Foreign Secretary dated 11 May to Michael Ancram and it states: "Ambassador Bremer and officials"—plural—"from the office of the UK Special Representative had a meeting with ICRC representatives on 26 February, at which the ICRC formally presented their report on the treatment of detainees". When you formally present a report, you do not just hand it over, you actually talk about it obviously because that is why you have the meeting. The meeting was reported to London in a classified telegram from your office, it was signed "Greenstock" in the usual way that telegrams are signed by Heads of Mission, you were not at the meeting. Whilst I am very happy to accept you did not know what was in the report, I think you will agree from this letter from the Foreign Secretary that officials in your office must have known the contents of that report.

  Sir Jeremy Greenstock: You will need to ask them because I never discussed it with them in the terms of your asking this question. What I know is that I did not know what was in that report. Since we were taking up, as it were, issues of less intensity with the Americans that we wanted to see improvements in, you can take it that if I had known it I would have taken this up.

  Mr Robathan: Thank you.

  Chairman: I think something that we can all agree on is, as you yourself have said, Sir Jeremy, whatever happened at Abu Ghraib it was very counterproductive and we would probably say it was something that actually stained us all in that I think we would never wish to see those sorts of incidents again in circumstances where we had a scintilla or a suggestion of influence. Sir Jeremy, thank you very much for coming and giving evidence this afternoon, for your candour on some quite complex issues, helping us understand the inter-relationships of various parts of this story. I think we will all read the transcript of what you have had to say with very considerable interest. We are very grateful to you for coming and appearing before the Committee, very many thanks.