Oral evidence: Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK's future policy options, HC 520

Friday 11 December 2015

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 14 December 2015

Watch the meeting: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/844fde5d-5cc9-4d0f-8b70- 70838cc07518

Members present:

Crispin Blunt (Chair); Mr John Baron; Stephen Gethins; Andrew Rosindell

Questions 175-232

Examination of Witness Rt Hon gave evidence.

Q175 Chair: Welcome to the fifth public evidence-taking session of our inquiry into Libya. Mr Blair, we are delighted that you have been able to come and give us evidence. It being a non-sitting Friday, this is the stay-behind party to take us through the questions we would like to ask you. I would like to pass on Ann Clwyd’s regards to you. Sadly, she is still recovering from illness and cannot be with us today. I am fairly certain that Mike Gapes would be passing on exactly the same message. I begin by going to the background to the Libyan situation—back to your 2004 deal in the desert and the 2006 economic deal setting up BP’s interests, amongst others, into Libya. I regard the achievement of Libyan disarmament and the huge compensation for the victims of Libyan misbehaviour over previous decades, and then the opening up of Libya’s oil, gas and water sectors, for example, to UK and other overseas investors, as a signal achievement of your premiership. Am I right? Tony Blair: Well, I hope you are. I think it was important, because otherwise we would have had a situation where Libya was continuing to sponsor terrorism, was continuing to develop chemical and nuclear weapons and would have remained isolated in the international community. I think it is important that we brought them in from the cold, as it were. It is important also in today’s context because, particularly if we had still had the residue of that chemical weapons programme in Libya today, given the state of Libya today and given the presence of ISIS there, I think it would have constituted a real risk, even today. Look, it was always one of these decisions that was difficult because of the nature of the regime and the individual we were dealing with but, on the other hand, I think it was worth while because of the protection of our security and because of the broader interests of trying to engage a country like that on a process of change.

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 1 Q176 Chair: We took evidence from Professor Joffé, in which he referred to our rather limited understanding of Libya. I invite you to comment on that, given your role between 2004 and 2006, the reset of the relationship with Libya and the fact that we were then able to establish proper UK diplomatic relations and a UK presence there. Daniel Kawczynski isn’t here—sadly, he is in Poland today on long-standing business—but he wrote a book about Gaddafi and is a member of this Committee. You are reported to have made six visits to Libya after you were Prime Minister, before 2010. Actually, our understanding of Libya was probably pretty reasonable, wasn’t it? Britain probably understood as much as anybody about Libya. Tony Blair: Yes. We obviously had very close links with them, and I continued those links after I left as well, because I think it was important to see if it was possible to get them to do the political and economic reform that followed their switch on the position of security. I am not sure it was very easy to do that, but it was worth trying in my view.

Q177 Chair: Just to explore those meetings in your post-premiership period before 2010, I am presuming there may have been a mixture of work being done there. Perhaps you can tell us whether there were any strictly as Middle East envoy, whether they were being done as part of Tony Blair Associates in terms of the political and economic re-engagement of Libya, or whether there were business interests. Perhaps you can just explain. Tony Blair: Sure. First of all, by the way, I never had any business interests in Libya. Secondly, the interaction that I had with them was really as a result of the interaction I had within Government. Obviously, I had already explained to Gaddafi what I was doing in the Middle East, since he had an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian issue. I would talk to him a lot about Africa, actually, which was probably the main topic. And then there was the whole relationship of Libya to the outside world. I was keen to encourage a process of development. As I say, a lot of the conversation afterwards was about whether it was possible for them to open up their economy, to make political change. The tragedy of Libya is that the potential of the country is enormous. It has got some incredible assets. Obviously, the potential in energy is huge, but so it is in tourism. I remember when I was growing up in the ’60s, Tripoli was regarded a bit like Dubai is today; it was regarded as one of the great open cities. They’ve got extraordinary antiquities in the country. It’s tragic for the Libyan people, really—tragic that the country was taken over by the Gaddafi regime and then tragic as to what has happened subsequent to the fall. But those assets remain and the country’s progress remains such that— if they could get stability there, it would be a fantastic country.

Q178 Chair: I have had it reported to me by a diplomat who was serving there in the period before our intervention that in a sense the wider British strategy was to—he described it as “betting the shop on Saif”, and that his engagement with the School of Economics and his obviously frequent visits to the UK—as is perhaps rather traditional with British policy towards the Middle East, there have been a number of sons that we have brought on. What would be your comment on that as the overall British strategy? Would it be one that you would recognise? Tony Blair: Well, I think we—we were obviously interested in Saif because he appeared to be the person most likely to succeed if that regime remained in place, but once the Arab Spring began, it was clear that in the case of none of these regimes they were going

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 2 to stay as they were, because in all of these countries you’ve got young populations who are anxious for change, feel economically and politically deprived. What you’ve really had in the Arab Spring is two groups of people coming together to remove the existing order. On the one hand you’ve got Islamists, and on the other hand you’ve got what I would call the more liberal-minded. And really part of the problem in the whole of the Arab Spring is that those two groups come together in a common objective, which is to remove the regime, but after that, of course, there’s a profound disagreement as to what comes next. Some want to put in place a society that is effectively governed by Islamism, and the others want a society probably more like the one that we have; and those two fundamentally divergent visions are in conflict with each other. So I think post the Arab Spring there was never any way the regime was going to go to the children of the dictator, as it were, but prior to that, obviously we were, as part of the engagement—I think the system did engage with Saif; I think I met him once or maybe twice myself. And who knows what would have happened if the Arab Spring hadn’t erupted? There may have been a more peaceful evolution of the country. We just don’t know. But it’s important to point out that despite all the engagement that we had with Gaddafi—as I say, I’m very happy to justify that, and to explain exactly why we did it and what benefits it brought—I was never under any illusions that in the end that society had to change fundamentally in order to allow its people to govern themselves in a way compatible with the 21st century.

Q179 Chair: Would a British diplomat have been right to think that Saif in 2010-11 was absolutely the best if not only prospect of effecting that kind of transition? Tony Blair: Yes; it looked like it at the time, I think. It’s not something I went into in a great deal of detail—there are others better able to comment, probably, than me—but I would think that’s a reasonable assumption.

Q180 Chair: Turning to the 2011 military intervention and putting it in the context of your— if I may put it this way—Chicago doctrine, from your 1999 speech, one of the conditions you suggested was that all diplomatic options needed to have been exhausted. Do you think that was done in Libya? Tony Blair: Because of the way events moved and the pace they moved at, I think there was no option in the end but to intervene, but I did try, as this thing got under way, to see if there was a possibility of him going, and going, as it were, voluntarily, and having a different type of transition put in place. So there was no question in the end that government of the country had fundamentally to change, but it’s very similar to the position with Assad in Syria. If you, in my view—and I say this particularly having gone through Afghanistan and Iraq, where the problem is you can remove the dictatorship, Taliban or Saddam, but after you remove the dictatorship, you get all those forces repressed and suppressed by the dictator coming to the surface, and then you get external actors, who then try to destabilise the situation. Because of that experience, I thought right from the outset with the Arab Spring, if you can get a peaceful evolution, that’s better than a revolution, because the revolution produces the chaos. I’m not sure it was ever possible to do that in the case of Gaddafi and Libya, but I did make an attempt at the time, as you know.

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 3 Q181 Chair: We will get into some of the detail of that in a moment. One of the other conditions you set down in the Chicago speech was that there is the question of whether we are “prepared for the long term”, post-intervention. What was your assessment of the post- conflict planning and the subsequent commitment to Libya? Tony Blair: I am not—I don’t mean to sort of avoid that question, but I wasn’t in government at the time, and I don’t know enough about it, to be fair, in commenting on it, to be honest about it. Look, the problem—I just want to say this about planning, in a sense in defence of the Government, not that it is my Government, but I think it is just important to make this point. The difference between the situations post 9/11 and pre 9/11—when, for example, we are talking about Kosovo, when I made that Chicago speech—is that in circumstances where you have radical Islamism as a factor, it’s a quite different type of problem you face. In other words, in Kosovo, once we had brought the fighting to an end, we were then able, over time, to try and help Kosovo, but also the Balkans and other countries. We now have, actually, a very good relationship with Serbia today. There are accession negotiations between these countries and the European Union. But when you are dealing with countries in which you’re going to have radical Islamist forces trying to stop the very things that you’re trying to do—in other words, trying to interfere with your planning—then it’s a whole different business, and far more difficult. Then what you find is, even as you’re trying to reconstruct the country, however much planning you are doing, there is a point at which you have to do the fighting, and that’s what becomes difficult. So the key then, in those situations, is to get security and order, because if you can’t, then no amount of planning is going to make up for the fact that you don’t have security. If you take the lessons from, if you like, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, you can see what the problem is. The problem is, once that dictatorship is removed, then there are forces that will come in deliberately to destabilise the country. So this is what makes it, in my view, completely different from a situation in which, okay, there may be a legacy of distrust and sectarianism as a result of the war that’s happened, but you’re able to reconstruct, and you’re able to correct any problems of planning as you’re going along, because you’ve got reasonable stability in the country. The problem in Libya is, obviously, today, as you can see, the security issue. If you can’t get security—okay, let’s hope that this peace process they’re doing at the moment between the two factions succeeds—it’s always going to be more difficult. So I am not qualified to give you a—because I wasn’t there at the time, I wasn’t Prime Minister, I don’t know what planning was done. But I do know that—and this is why, by the way, I was trying to secure a peaceful transition—whatever planning you do, you are going to find it very, very tough to stay in there for the long term if you’ve got these radical elements that are trying to destabilise the country.

Q182 Stephen Gethins: Obviously, you can’t make a judgment because you weren’t in government in 2011, but I have a very simple question: knowing what you know now, do you think that Libya is in a better or worse place as a result of the 2011 intervention? Tony Blair: Look, you’ve got to put the counterfactual always: what would have happened if we hadn’t? It is very hard to predict that. The Libyan people were not going to accept continuation of the rule of Gaddafi. So, in a way, you can debate—look, at the

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 4 moment Libya is obviously in a state of instability, chaos. It has caused huge problems for the whole of the region. You have got groups like Boko Haram that have been strengthened as a result of the shipping of weapons, and personnel indeed, from Libya. All of that is true, but I don’t believe that the Gaddafi regime was sustainable in the end. Look, again this goes to a wider argument, where you often find people saying, “Look, wouldn’t it just be better if we dealt with the dictators? At least when we had Assad there and Saddam there and Gaddafi there and”—I don’t know—“Ben Ali there, we knew what we were dealing with.” I completely understand that as an argument, by the way, but I think what the Arab Spring shows you is that however much we may want to have dealt with these people, the populations of these countries are not going to tolerate it. In particular, they are not going to tolerate a tiny group of people, often unrepresentative of the majority in the country, running the country. So, look, it is difficult. I can tell you today that obviously Libya is a real security problem—it is a security problem actually for us, I think, here—but I don’t think you can make the judgment as to whether it would be better if we hadn’t intervened, because then you have got to say, “How would that have then played out?” as Gaddafi tried to cling on to power and others tried to removed him. You can look at Syria today, where we didn’t intervene, by the way, and say it is even worse.

Q183 Mr Baron: Mr Blair, first of all, thanks for joining us. One of the issues that is taxing the Committee is why the relationship with the Libyan regime changed as dramatically as it did in those three or four years after you, in essence, brought Colonel Gaddafi in from the cold. What we are trying to do is ascertain why that change took place—if we park Benghazi, just for a second. The nature of that relationship that you brokered, and there were positive aspects to that, as the Chairman has made us aware or reminded us—just for the record, was there any sort of understanding or agreement, however informal, that difficult issues such as the justice for Yvonne Fletcher’s relatives would be sidelined for the greater prize of better relations, and perhaps even commercial interests, in order to bring Colonel Gaddafi in from the cold? Tony Blair: No. Let me just deal specifically with Yvonne Fletcher and with the Lockerbie victims. It is important to realise that Yvonne Fletcher was murdered in 1984; compensation was secured under my Government. Lockerbie happened in 1988; compensation was secured under my Government. So we didn’t lay these issues aside; and indeed, the Metropolitan police went to interview people about Yvonne Fletcher under my Government and the arrangements we brokered with the Libyans. So we didn’t set any of these issues aside, but we did believe that there was a huge prize in bringing them from a position where they were sponsoring terrorism to a position where they were co-operating in the fight against it and then, secondly, creating the circumstances in which they voluntarily gave up their chemical and nuclear weapons programme—circumstances, by the way, when they revealed it, it amounted to much more than we thought it was, so we actually hadn’t a full and clear picture of it. One thing that is very important—I’m happy to go through this for you—is that the so- called deal in the desert, which is my meeting with Gaddafi in March 2004, was part of a whole process that had begun over a year before, in which we were bringing them to the point where they were going to make a full and complete confession, as it were, as to what they had been doing with chemical and nuclear weapons. So there wasn’t a sort of moment when I suddenly went to see Gaddafi and we made an agreement. No, there had been a whole

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 5 process of work. In fact, I think there were 10 different steps along the way, up to that meeting in March 2004, and the prize for us was enormous—I mean, it was important. On the sponsoring of terrorism to co-operating, that again was really important.

Q184 Mr Baron: But may I suggest to you, Mr Blair, that compensation is one thing, but justice when it comes to relatives, and seeing people brought to justice for heinous crimes, is quite another. The CPS, very early in 2007, had the evidence, so it claims, that two key individuals should be brought to justice—I think you are aware of that—and yet after the sort of improvement in relations in 2007, the British Met did not go to Libya at all to actually pursue those investigations. In fact, only two weeks ago, Sir Vincent Fean, a former British ambassador to Tripoli, said that the decision was taken by Mr Blair’s— Chair: If you want to answer that, please do, but we are outside the terms of reference of the inquiry. Mr Baron: Well, he said the decision was taken by Mr Blair’s Administration “not to take up the cudgels on behalf of the victims directly” after relations were restored. It would help us if we could just have an explanation as to why that was the case, because we are trying to get to the bottom of why this relationship changed. To do that, we need to understand the relationship at the beginning. Tony Blair: The relationship didn’t change in 2007—we had been working with them over a period of years by then. I don’t know why the Metropolitan police didn’t take the case forward in respect of Yvonne Fletcher. What I do know is that prior to my Government coming to power there had been no interview of any suspects in Libya. In 2006, for example, I think the Metropolitan Police Service actually went, and I recall they interviewed something like 60 different people. I am not responsible for how it was proceeded with after that, but there was no sense that we were holding back on this; on the contrary, we were raising it. You will find the case of Yvonne Fletcher raised virtually every single time. I don’t know what Vincent Fean was referring to, but he may be referring to the other issue, which is to do with the IRA victims, which is a wholly separate question. But we didn’t hold back on Lockerbie, or Yvonne Fletcher; on the contrary, we got not just the compensation agreed—we don’t want to go back into all the Megrahi stuff and so on—but those trials happened, again, under my Government. There was never any question of saying, “We’re not going to raise these issues because we want commercial deals or we want”—you know—“to get into a better relationship with you.” On the contrary, those issues were part of the very improved relationship that we had.

Q185 Stephen Gethins: Mr Blair, your foreign policy, if you like, could be argued to have led the Gaddafi regime to give up its nuclear weapons, so on the subject of WMD, if he had still had those in 2011, do you think he would have used them? Tony Blair: I don’t know. I hope not, but I think the bigger risk would have been the chemical weapons in particular. The nuclear weapons probably wouldn’t have been in a position where they could have been used, but the chemical weapons were quite substantial. The amount of chemical weapons that in the end were there—you know, there were 3,500 chemical aerial bombs, 23 tonnes of mustard gas and 1,300 of chemical precursors, and of course there were Scud missiles and other things. I think the bigger danger, frankly, would not have been him using it; the bigger danger would have been that stockpile falling into the hands of various extremist groups, which obviously proliferated in Libya.

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 6 Q186 Stephen Gethins: On that, do you think that if future Governments are negotiating over WMD with other dictators, this might put them off—that seeing what happening in Libya might be an added complication? Tony Blair: How do you mean exactly? Stephen Gethins: Well, basically, he gave up his WMD, and then a few years later he was gotten rid of by western intervention. Do you think that that might cause difficulties in the future? Tony Blair: Well, it’s a good question actually. Look, it’s difficult, because you can’t justify the maintenance of the regime, especially once the people have risen up. Assad certainly—well, I say certainly; I think there is evidence that Assad did take the view that Gaddafi, having co-operated with the west and then being removed, was a lesson that he should learn, and he of course did not give up his chemical weapons, because we know he used them against his own people. So I don’t know, but in any event, in the end I think Gaddafi had to go and I don’t think there’s a way out of that; but the reason why I tried to get a situation where he would go as part of an agreed transition was precisely because I think it was important that we did recognise that for a period of years he had been co-operating with us, and also because of the lessons of instability once you remove the dictatorship.

Q187 Andrew Rosindell: Good morning, Mr Blair. You mentioned a moment ago the compensation issue regarding Yvonne Fletcher and Lockerbie, but you said that dealing with Northern Ireland and the Libyan-supplied Semtex was different. Why was Northern Ireland different and why didn’t your Government insist that compensation was paid to those victims? Tony Blair: Because the compensation for the victims of IRA terrorism was handled under the compensation provisions that were in place—put in place, in fact, under a previous Government—and that was how it was handled. That was a position that was, as it were, accepted not just in my Government, but previously.

Q188 Mr Baron: Mr Blair, you will appreciate that honesty, when it comes to why we intervene, is paramount. Those of us who opposed the intervention in Libya at the time did so for a variety of reasons, including a belief that the Government of the day did not understand the events on the ground and the lack of post-intervention planning, but one of the other key reasons was the actual motive itself. Was this about the citizens of Benghazi or was this about regime change? We have had evidence before us—this is an evidence-based inquiry, obviously—suggesting that the quote about massacring the citizens of Benghazi actually wasn’t accurate, and there are lots of quotes to suggest that he was after what he called the bearded ones—the Islamic fundamentalists, the jihadists—and that in previous interventions in towns further to the east there had been no large-scale massacre there by Gaddafi forces. What is your take as to why the west intervened? You met Colonel Gaddafi several times in the lead-up to that intervention. Do you think he would have undertaken that massacre and do you think it was a legitimate reason for our intervention, given that this would have not been true to form in his previous taking of towns further to the east? Tony Blair: The answer is I don’t know. Let’s not kid ourselves: this was a very repressive regime. Obviously, his case always was, and was at the time when I was speaking to him in around late February 2011, that there were fundamentalists—radical Islamists—that

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 7 were the ones creating the trouble. In fact, part of what I was trying to suggest at the time was that, as it were, he might step aside—you might have an international commission of some sort to come and investigate what was happening. I don’t know if it was possible to do it, and in the end it didn’t come to anything, because people felt— But I’m sure that the reason for intervention was the reason the Government gave at the time: it was that they thought there was going to be this slaughter of innocent people. Whether there would have been or not, I honestly can’t judge, but one of the reasons why I thought it important to try at least to see if it was possible to have got some agreed outcome was because of, obviously, his case, but I can’t verify it. His case was that he was not doing this; he was not going to engage in this violence. You have got to also look at the statement even Saif Gaddafi made about killing all of the people and so on. I think it’s really difficult to judge.

Q189 Mr Baron: Coming back to regime change, though, because some of us did suspect, rightly or wrongly, that there was a case here that certainly the west was thinking about regime change when it intervened. UN Resolution 1973 was a diplomatic coup as far as the Brits were concerned—it was a great piece of UN diplomacy—but I think it’s fair to say that certainly the Russians, the Chinese, the African Union, for example, subsequently came to the view that this was about regime change: that, in effect, they had been hoodwinked at the UN in supporting the resolution when it talked about simply protecting the citizens of Benghazi. Subsequent action they would point to included, for example, the bombing of his Winnebago, which was hardly a communications centre, and so on. Subsequent to the intervention, do you think these United Nation members, some of them P5, have a case? Tony Blair: Well I think when you have a regime like this it’s very difficult to distinguish between removal of the regime and stopping the repression, because the two are so intimately connected. Look, President Putin has often expressed the view that he agreed to Libya on one basis and then it was pursued on a different basis, but then his view is that all of these regimes are worth keeping in place because they provide stability. My point is very simple: I’m afraid they don’t in the end, because the people aren’t going to tolerate being governed in that way. Therefore we can, in a sense, have an argument about whether the Arab Spring is right or wrong—and there are a lot of people who will say, “It’s not really an Arab Spring now; it’s an Arab winter,” because of everything that’s happened—but my point is: you may think that, I may think that, President Putin may think that, it doesn’t matter; the people aren’t gonna have it. I don’t know that you can draw a very binary distinction between removing the regime and stopping the regime killing people in that way. But again, look, the hesitation that you expressed, and my own experience from Afghanistan and Iraq, was what made me think, “Look, if you can get evolution, get it.” This is why I said right at the very outset about President Mubarak and Egypt, “Let’s try and work for a transition,” because if you don’t, first of all, this is someone who’s been your ally for a long period of time and you’re now going to throw them under a bus. That’s not, in my view, great diplomacy and politics, because of the message that it sends elsewhere, but secondly, we know what the problems are when the regime goes. So I think there are two big lessons out of all of this in the Middle East, based on not just the experience I had in office, but being out in the Middle East now probably twice a month: evolution is better than revolution, if you can get it; and Islamism, especially when it trends into an extreme form of Islamist fundamentalism or radicalism, is going to be your

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 8 problem. That’s going to be your problem, whatever—because let’s be clear, if you took that component out of it, we wouldn’t be having this discussion today.

Q190 Mr Baron: Very briefly, because we have further questions, can I press you, if you don’t mind Mr Blair? At the time, given what you knew of the regime, given his actions previously in sending his son to negotiate, release prisoners and, if you like, try to engage, while isolating the extremists, given your knowledge of him and the regime, do you think it was right that we undertook the bombing campaign, and were you surprised by how long it took? Tony Blair: I think that, once it was clear that you were not going to agree a transition, I don’t think there was an option but to get him out. But I think, had we been able to agree a transition, that would have been a better outcome.

Q191 Andrew Rosindell: Mr Blair, based on what you have just said about the preference for evolution over revolution—I think we have learned that lesson—do you think that in the minds of President Sarkozy and David Cameron at the time, that they were trying to get an evolution of Gaddafi’s regime going in a transitional way, or do you think they had given up all hope of that, or did they even try to succeed in having more of an evolution rather than what we finished up with? Tony Blair: You are asking me to step into the minds of two people I am not, as it were, so, I find that difficult to do, and because I have taken these types of decisions in government myself, I am not going to criticise the Prime Minister or Nicolas Sarkozy, or anyone else. I know how difficult these decisions are. I suspect they came to the view that, in the end, there was no alternative but to remove Gaddafi if they wanted to save the country. I am sure they did it for reasons that are perfectly well-intentioned, and in good faith. I can’t tell you what they thought, but if you want my instinct about it, I think they thought, “He is going to kill large numbers of people and we do have to intervene.” And let’s be clear: the majority of people in Libya wanted to see Gaddafi gone. They don’t want the present situation, but that’s been the same in Afghanistan, and it’s the same in Iraq. It’s the same in Libya. It’s the same in Syria. It’s the same in Yemen. People want rid of the regime that is there, because it does not represent the people, but it’s what comes after that’s the problem.

Q192 Andrew Rosindell: So had you still been in No. 10 at the time, would you have handled in the same way or differently? Tony Blair: Look, because of the relationship I had built, I would have tried very hard to secure an agreement that he go under some process of transition—and because of the experience I have been through in Afghanistan and Iraq. But I can’t say to you that that would have been successful. It might not have been. Some of these people who have been in power a long time and are used to very repressive systems of government are not easy to negotiate with, when you are negotiating the end of their regime. Obviously, because of the relationship I had built up, I would have tried to do in government what I have tried to outside it, just as a private individual, but I can’t say whether it would have succeeded. Chair: Let us get into some of those details as to what you actually did in 2011.

Q193 Stephen Gethins: On that, can you tell us about the telephone call that you made to Colonel Gaddafi in February 2011?

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 9 Tony Blair: Yes. I had a call with him in which I said—and I am pleased to be able to give some of the detail of the conversation, since it has been presented as if I was trying to “save Gaddafi”. I wasn’t trying to save Gaddafi. I was trying to get him to go.

Q194 Chair: You probably have a record of the conversations you had and the strategy you were following at that time. Tony Blair: This has been in one of the emails, because I sent this—there was a note of the call sent to the Secretary of State at the time in the US. Just to read some of the key parts of the quote, because it gives you a sense of what I was saying: “Tony Blair delivered a very strong message to Gaddafi that the violence had to end and that he had to stand aside to allow a peaceful process to take place. He repeated this several times throughout the call…He repeated that the violence had to stop now and that he must leave the country…‘The absolute key thing is that the bloodshed and violence must stop.... ‘if you have a safe place to go then you should go there, because this will not end peacefully unless that happens and there has to be a process of change.’” My concern was not for his safety. My concern was to get him out of the situation so that a peaceful transition could take place.

Q195 Stephen Gethins: Were you doing so as a concerned private citizen, or were you doing so on behalf of somebody else? Tony Blair: I was doing it because I was a concerned private citizen— because I knew him and I had the relationship and because, as I say, having gone through my own experience in office, I was aware of what the risks are.

Q196 Stephen Gethins: So you just did this of your own volition. Tony Blair: Yes, absolutely.

Q197 Stephen Gethins: Okay. And was that the only phone call that you had with Colonel Gaddafi at that time? Tony Blair: No. I had two or three with him, but all to the same effect.

Q198 Stephen Gethins: So there were more calls than the one that we have the record of from the State Department. Tony Blair: Yes, but this was all in the space of about 24 hours. I had two or three calls, I think, with him—I can’t recall exactly whether it was two or three, but they were all basically saying, “There’s going to be action unless you come up with an agreed process of change. If you don’t do that, they’re going to come and get you out, so agree.”

Q199 Stephen Gethins: And even though you were doing it as a private citizen, did anybody else ask you to make that call? Tony Blair: No, I suggested that I make it. I obviously cleared it with the Secretary of State in the US, and I think I spoke—one time, I think—to our Prime Minister here, to David Cameron. And look, they were completely non-committal, obviously, but prepared to listen to what I had to say.

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 10 Q200 Stephen Gethins: Sure. So you made it clear to the Prime Minister and you made it clear to the Secretary of State of the United States as well, and then you just phoned him up. Tony Blair: Yes.

Q201 Stephen Gethins: Okay. What was your objective for that call? I know you have touched on it a little bit, but what did you want to see at the end of that? Tony Blair: What I wanted to see at the end was a situation where he agreed that there would be a process of change. We never got far enough to get into the detail of this, but my idea was actually that he stepped aside and that there was then, as I say, some form of international—could be UN-led—commission that would see what the situation was in the country. And then it could bring the different factions together—including the one that he represented, because it is not as if he had no representation in the country—and see if it was possible to agree a transition. But in the end, events simply took over as they do in these situations.

Q202 Stephen Gethins: Sure. And given that there was a series of phone calls, I am wondering if you could tell me how you left it. Was a note taken of the other phone calls that took place as well? Tony Blair: I don’t know whether there was a note of the other calls. There was a note, certainly, of the calls with him.

Q203 Stephen Gethins: So there was a note of the other phone calls with Colonel Gaddafi. Tony Blair: Yes, but they were all to the same effect. We have the notes on them, I very happy to let you have them. Stephen Gethins: That would be very helpful. Tony Blair: But they are basically as set out in the email that has been published.

Q204 Chair: Was that 24 hours your only stab at communicating with him or were there subsequent efforts over the next six months or so before he was killed? Tony Blair: No. I thought my only utility was to be able to use the relationship I had with him to get him to do something. Chair: Sure. Tony Blair: And once it became clear that there was no appetite to do this, events had to take their course. As I say, in the end it became clear that he was going to be removed.

Q205 Chair: In the period leading up to his death, were you engaged in any other discussions with any other members of the family or the regime? Were people seeking to engage you in trying to find a way out of this? Tony Blair: No, because I think by then it was pretty clear that there wasn’t a way out of it. And once it became clear that there was a situation of conflict between my own country and—I didn’t want to get in the middle of that, either.

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 11 Q206 Chair: But given your relationship with this, were you slightly surprised that No. 10 didn’t use you more? Tony Blair: No, look—they were perfectly open to my having the conversation with him, as I recall. I don’t think there was any problem with that at all. But there was a very strong feeling, particularly in the US, that he just had to go. These things are very difficult because it is where the practical business of politics comes into play. So even though I had a terrible relationship with Assad, I said, when this began in Syria, “Look, if you can agree a process of transition, well then, do it”—because of the consequence of not doing it—“but certainly don’t leave him in place, tell him he’s got to go, and not go and get him out.”

Q207 Stephen Gethins: You mentioned earlier, Mr Blair, that the dealings, especially in terms of weapons of mass destruction, made any deal with Assad much more difficult. Did you feed in in that regard, and what lessons should we draw from that? Tony Blair: Not really, but I think—I don’t know. Again, you just can’t tell whether it would ever have been possible to have done a deal with Assad that he would go under a process of transition. But, to my point that evolution is better than revolution, even when you have an uprising, if you can agree the process of transition, it is better, obviously, because you have a better chance of holding the stability of the country together. Although, it is perfectly possible that, even if he had said yes and everybody had wanted it, you still couldn’t have made it happen and you might still have had a situation of civil war, because one of the problems is that there are people with very different agendas who want these regimes to fall. Some of them have agendas that we would recognise; some of them have agendas that, frankly, we would find it very difficult to compromise with. This is why it’s difficult. As I keep saying to people, you’ve got two periods of policy making: you’ve got the policy making from September 2001, as it were, through Afghanistan and Iraq, and then you’ve got the policy-making period post Arab Spring. What they show is that it’s very, very difficult, because you’ve got these radical forces and external actors. Even if you want to stabilise them, even if you want the best things possible for that country and even if its people do by the way—because the majority of people in all these countries probably want decent, stable Government, rule-based economies and religiously tolerant societies—unfortunately, there are actors in the region and elements within those countries who don’t want those things, and that’s the problem. That’s why dealing with these situations is a world away from dealing with Kosovo, Bosnia or other situations of intervention.

Q208 Andrew Rosindell: Just to be clear, Mr Blair, was it your initiative to speak to Colonel Gaddafi, or did they contact you? Tony Blair: No, I’m pretty sure I decided to contact— Andrew Rosindell: So it was your own initiative to do that. Tony Blair: Yes, I think so, but let me check on whether there were calls from his people first.

Q209 Andrew Rosindell: Were you asked by anybody else—the US Government, the EU or anyone in the British Government—to act as a go-between or to liaise with Gaddafi?

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 12 Tony Blair: No, I was not asked to do that, but obviously I cleared the fact that I was doing it. I didn’t want to have these conversations without people saying, “Okay, have the conversation.” But let me make it clear that they weren’t committing themselves to any outcome—either the US Government or the British Government.

Q210 Andrew Rosindell: Did the Gaddafi regime ask you to exercise particular influence that you might have on the UK or any other Government to try to assist them at that point? Tony Blair: In a sense, the whole tenor of the conversation was, “But if I do that, what will they do?”, etc. It never got far enough to get into a detailed discussion, but of course they were wanting me to use my influence with the other Governments. They also wanted me to explain their case, which was that they weren’t attacking their population. Gaddafi’s claim throughout was, “This is not true; it is not happening. You have been misled.” I couldn’t tell whether that was true or not.

Q211 Andrew Rosindell: At what point did you give up any hope that there could be a transition or an evolution, as you said? Tony Blair: Well, it happened very quickly—over the space of a couple of days, maximum. Once people said, “Look, you’ve got to tell him to go”—which I did; I relayed the message faithfully—obviously, it is not really a negotiation any more.

Q212 Andrew Rosindell: Was Mr Cameron positive about your intervention and your initiative in doing this? Tony Blair: Again, you’d have to ask them about that, but he was perfectly content, without any commitment at all—perfectly properly—for the conversation to happen. But don’t let me put words in his mouth. He was not agreeing to it or advocating it; he was merely listening, as you’d expect.

Q213 Mr Baron: Mr Blair, you made the point earlier that evolution is better than revolution, but you also suggested that the view was that he had to go. In your discussions, you were trying to make a case for transition, essentially. What sort of reception did you get to that line of inquiry? Was the problem perhaps not just the West’s lack of understanding of the situation, but that you were speaking to a man—a regime—that did not agree with you but was going to cling on right to the end regardless? What was the push-back that you got from that? Tony Blair: Obviously, what was felt was, “This is somebody who is going to try to cling on to power, no matter what. There is a real risk that he goes and kills large numbers of people, and we’ve got to stop it,” which I totally understand. If the opening had been there to develop a proper plan, it would probably have been worth investigating, but events move very quickly in these situations. That is why, as I say, I don’t make any criticism of the Prime Minister for the decision he took. I think he will have taken it in perfectly good faith for the reasons he gave.

Q214 Mr Baron: Once the military action started, did you believe that it exceeded the terms allowed within UN resolution 1973, which did not authorise regime change? It was quite clear in its wording; there was no ambiguity. And yet you look at what actually happened on

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 13 the ground and—it’s not just Russia and China, but the African Union and many others who believe this—it well exceeded that resolution. Was that your understanding, or not? What was your take on it? Tony Blair: My take in these situations is that sometimes people come and agree UN resolutions with slightly different agendas, as it were, and different understandings of those resolutions. But my take on it was that once you engage in a military action to protect people against a regime, the line between that and—

Q215 Mr Baron: Regime change? Tony Blair: —becomes pretty thin at a certain point.

Q216 Mr Baron: Okay. But do you think UN resolution 1973 was exceeded? Tony Blair: No, I’m not saying that. I’m—

Q217 Mr Baron: You’re not going to answer the question, or you don’t think it was? Tony Blair: Well, I am answering, but I’m answering as best I can. Obviously, the Committee is going to look at this—absolutely properly—and you’ll make up your own mind about it. But I’m very mindful of the fact that, having been Prime Minister for 10 years and taken a lot of decisions that were subject to a lot of criticism, I know how difficult it is. So I’m not going to get into a position of criticising my successor. I totally understand the reasons why they did what they did. Since I wasn’t personally and intimately involved in the decision-making process, I’ve learnt enough during my time not to be speculative.

Q218 Mr Baron: No, no—I accept that. One also accepts there are very few easy decisions left in foreign policy; it’s just a series of hard choices. We’re not asking you to criticise. We just want your assessment as to whether you thought the military action that came from that resolution actually exceeded the resolution itself. Tony Blair: I don’t think it did, because once you get to a certain point, as I say, the line between regime change and protecting people is very thin.

Q219 Mr Baron: Very briefly, another reason that there was concern in the House at the time of the vote was that there seemed to be a lack of understanding of events on the ground and the forces at play. We could go back not just to Labour Governments but Conservative Governments with regard to perhaps a lack of investment in our understanding within the FCO and so forth; one doesn’t need to get party political about this. But the concern was that, once you remove the common enemy—Gaddafi—we did not understand how easily the alliance facing him could fragment into 100 militias. And actually, in the end, that’s roughly what turned out to be the case. Can you just give us your take, Mr Blair? You knew the region reasonably well— probably better than most within Whitehall Departments. Why was there that lack of understanding as to what would happen when the common enemy was removed, and what perhaps could have been done differently, leaving aside the evolution point? Tony Blair: I think, frankly, nowadays our understanding should be pretty good, because we’ve got a lot of experience of it. And the problem is, and I think this is always clear, because you’ve got in North Africa and the Middle East this very toxic mix of bad

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 14 politics and abuse of religion over a long period of time. So whenever you remove, or lift the lid off as it were—let’s put it like that—

Q220 Mr Baron: Remove the hard man? Tony Blair: Yes. Then you’re going to have a situation in which these fissiparous activities happen. And because of this—I stress this because I think this is the fundamental thing that I’ve come to understand about the whole of the region—where you have this Islamist extremism as a factor, you’re going to have a degree of instability that is more than just militias; it is more than just armed groups. Unfortunately, they are armed groups who have a view of the world in which they don’t mind how many people they kill, and they don’t mind dying; so it makes them, actually, very difficult to deal with in a situation where you are going to be trying to create stability when they are trying to stop it. So what happens in these countries—and you notice this each time, and this is why it is important to learn the lessons of all of the interventions: when you first get rid of the dictator there is general support.

Q221 Mr Baron: I agree, and then it fragments, but—very briefly—should we have been aware of that? One of the criticisms of our intervention was that we spent an awful lot of money kicking the door down but very little money in actually following through with the post reconstruction; and we fundamentally misunderstood events on the ground, thinking, for example, that independents on the National Council were moderates, which in the end they were not. Chair: By 2011 we should have known this. Mr Baron: What went wrong—once that all became clear: is it because we didn’t have a plan, basically? Tony Blair: No; I think we will have had a plan, but— Mr Baron: Post intervention. Tony Blair: The issue is if you underestimate the security problem. Again, my experience of these situations is that planning divides into two. There is the security and then there is reconstruction, infrastructure, social and economic institution building, and so on. This second bit—if you’ve got a problem with the planning you can correct it; it is not hard to do and you can do it almost as you go, you know. It is the first bit that’s the problem—it’s the security, because if you can’t handle the security you can’t do this reconstruction.

Q222 Mr Baron: But we knew that, Mr Blair—if you don’t mind: a final question. We knew that before we intervened—that there was going to be a security issue—because if you are right in what you tell us, that we knew it was going to fragment into 100 militias, there simply was no proper response, then, by the West. Should that have been a factor before we went in? Because if we knew it was going to splinter badly and there was that security situation, should that not have been uppermost in our minds before making the decision, knowing it was going to degenerate into a bloody civil war? Tony Blair: Okay, you guys are going to have to write your own report, as it were. I understand the point you are making and I think there is a real aspect and dimension to this— that isn’t just confined to Libya, by the way, but you can put it across a whole range of situations—where, put it like this, as one central part of planning you have to decide how you

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 15 are going to deal with the security aspect, because that is going to be your problem. If there is not order—because what is it that the previous repressive regime did, right? It probably did everything wrong, but the one thing these very repressive regimes do is, they can keep a lid on the security problem—to a degree, okay—until you find the eruptions of the Arab Spring, and so on. But the point is, unless you have that security part as part of your planning going in, then even though lots of people will be telling you, by the way, in the opposition, “No, it’s going to be great. We’re all going to come together, we’re all going to work together. It’s going to be good”—and, by the way, many of them will be completely hoping that is so and wanting to make it so—where you are intervening and this Islamist extremism is going to be an element, you are going to have to have a major security component to anything you do. And, by the way, we will face the same problem in Syria. Supposing we end up with an agreement in Syria as to what should happen in the future. Who is going to impose the order that allows that new constitution to take shape and be implemented?

Q223 Chair: That is exactly where we have been trying to direct the Prime Minister’s attention through the work of this Committee—we have made some progress. But back to 2011, and the discussion in the National Security Council, reported on by Anthony Seldon: he reports disagreements between Sir John Sawers and General Richards, who are then concerned about the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm to be seen to be doing the right thing and essentially taking out the dictator of a regime without there being a sense that there was a follow-on strategy and this was coherent and sat within the British national interest and, indeed, the wider security interest. With all the lessons that you will have learned, and that the country has learned, through the experience that we had—I am trying to put you in the position of David Cameron at the time, in that discussion in the National Security Council—I rather think that you would have taken rather more notice of your head of the Secret Intelligence Service and the Chief of the Defence Staff. Tony Blair: I am not here to criticise the Prime Minister. Chair: I am asking— Tony Blair: I do not mean to be avoiding the question but, in a sense, I do mean to do it, because I don’t think it is a fair question to put to me. Look, I wasn’t in that situation. I don’t know the facts that he will have known. I have been in that situation myself where people have been coming along, ex post facto, and saying, “You should have done this. You should have done that.” I am not going to be in that position.

Q224 Chair: But you are probably the most informed witness, in terms of dealing with the Gaddafi regime. Indeed, the establishment of the re-engagement of the Gaddafi regime with the whole world, as I said at the beginning, was, I believe, a signal achievement of foreign policy under your premiership, so I don’t think it is unreasonable for us to see what your reaction was in 2011, when you did try to take a hand, off your own bat. As you witnessed this, with all that experience, were you quietly weeping into your pillow at night asking, “Why on earth have they not thought this through properly? Why are they not trying to find a way out of this, other than through the route that the British, largely following the French and with reported American reluctance, are pursuing in this British and French exercise?”? I am interested in your views. You are a privileged witness in that sense. Tony Blair: Sure.

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 16 Chair: We have to learn the lessons and put this in our report, and your views are authoritative. Tony Blair: Well, I think if I had been there at the time, it obviously would have been different because of the relationship with him. That would obviously have been one dimension of the approach that would have been different. If we could have got an agreed way out, that would have been preferable, but I understand why the Prime Minister took the view, ultimately, that that wasn’t possible. I don’t think I have got anything more to say on that.

Q225 Andrew Rosindell: Just one very brief but quite important question, Mr Blair. Colonel Gaddafi did some pretty atrocious things. I know why you did it, and I know why you felt the need to try to build that relationship with him, but did you at any point feel uncomfortable about having to deal with a man that had murdered so many people and committed so many atrocities? Did you at any point feel that that was an uncomfortable position to be in? Do you think the ends justified the means? Tony Blair: Well, I don’t think the ends justified the means. When I was dealing with him, I was completely cognisant of the history and the terrible things that had been done, but I did think the prize was significant. At a certain point, you take that decision as to whether it is right to do it or not, and I felt it was. The co-operation that we got was not just the giving up of the nuclear and chemical weapons programmes; the co-operation we got on terrorism was really important for us. This was part of keeping our own country safe. If you feel you shouldn’t do it, you shouldn’t do it. If you feel it is the right thing to do, you should do it. I didn’t do it leaving to one side the things that he had done before. Indeed, as I say, it was the reason why I only met him after a year’s worth of intense engagement. They first got in touch with our people in March 2003 about their chemical and nuclear programmes; that is when they got in touch with us—March 2003. After that, there were some 10 different steps before I finally went to see him. When I went to see him, Lockerbie, Yvonne Fletcher, these were absolutely in my mind and part of the conversation, but I felt that, ultimately, the gain was worth it. I do believe it was worth it, but that doesn’t mean to say that I approve of either what he did before or the way he ran his country. I felt the benefit for our country and for the wider world of him shifting his position on those two questions was great, and I had the hope—it was probably misplaced, but I had the hope—that he would also engage ultimately in political and economic reform.

Q226 Chair: In those conversations you had with Gaddafi at the time, presumably he was asking you to help him and to make a case for him. Tony Blair: Well, he was asking whether, if he did these things, he would be able to—

Q227 Chair: Survive? Tony Blair: Able to rejoin the international community, as it were, and we were spelling out the steps that he had to take. So it was all about trying to get him into a different place, but of course the carrot for that, if you like, was that he would then come back into the international community. I would have conversations with him about the things we wanted to have happen, because I was the only—well, I wasn’t the only leader he was seeing; he actually was seeing other Europeans, but for some reason he felt that I was his route into the West and into being

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 17 able to re-engage with the Americans and put the past behind them, so he would speak very frankly to me about his views. He was an individual who had been shut off from the world, in the sense of our world, for about 30 years, so he had theories on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian issue. He had theories on politics. He had theories about Islam and how it should develop. He was somebody who, a lot of the time—this is the issue with some of these people: they have been so isolated that they really haven’t heard sensible arguments, and their system doesn’t allow many people to come and talk to them. So of course he wanted to benefit by re- engaging with the West, and that to me is absolutely fair enough. That is the point: if he is prepared to come into compliance with international rules on WMD, on terrorism and so on, he can be engaged with. The engagement on terrorism—I stress this—was very, very important. It was invaluable, actually, at points for our security services.

Q228 Stephen Gethins: In terms of the three conversations you were talking about—we look forward to seeing those transcripts as part of our inquiry—did he give you a specific message that he was asking you to take back to David Cameron or anybody else as his conduit, if you like? Tony Blair: You mean in 2011? Chair: In 2011. Tony Blair: In 2011, his basic message was, “You have to tell them it’s not true that I’m exercising all this violence against my people. I’m actually attacking Islamists, and they’re your enemy as well as our enemy. You’re all mistaken.” That was the basic message.

Q229 Stephen Gethins: That was pretty much it. Tony Blair: Yes. I am not saying that’s true, by the way, but that’s what he was saying.

Q230 Chair: Finally, on your interaction with Gaddafi, was he a rational actor—obviously, given the limitations of his world view and his isolated view—in your meetings with him as a leader? Tony Blair: It is a very good question and hard to answer. He was unusual; that’s for sure. I don’t know how rational he would have been in the circumstances if we had managed to—was he rational after recognising that he had to step aside? I don’t know.

Q231 Chair: To see an exit route. Tony Blair: It is very hard to judge, but I think he did—he said, at any rate, that he had a very clear view that the Islamism that he had, at one time, supported and played with was a profound threat, and that we didn’t understand how deep this threat was and how severe. But when you talked to him about, for example, Israel and Palestine, he had this—I remember getting a presentation on his Israeltine solution, which was, let’s say, on the eccentric end of the Israeli-Palestinian discussion. So I don’t know; he governed his country for a long period of time, so I guess there must have been a certain amount of rationality in that, but it’s very hard to judge with someone like that—very, very hard to judge.

Q232 Chair: Mr Blair, thank you very much indeed for coming to give us evidence. If your team can provide transcripts of the things you have offered us and, indeed, anything else you

Oral evidence: Libya policy, HC 520 18 think would help us with our inquiry by the year end, that would be helpful. Obviously, we want to draw the right lessons out of this, as well as examining the context in which the decision was taken. Tony Blair: Sure. I am very happy to send you the transcripts of the conversations, and on one or two points in my evidence where I said I had to check things, I will check them and let you know. Chair: Thank you very much.

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