Situation in Iraq

On Sunday, 15 August 2004, Peter Sissons interviewed former envoy in Baghdad, Sir Jeremy Greenstock

Please note "BBC Breakfast with Frost" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Former envoy in Baghdad, Sir Jeremy Greenstock

PETER SISSONS: Well staying with the situation in Iraq, after the war the senior diplomat Sir Jeremy Greenstock went there as the British government's envoy, he worked closely with the country's American administrators before they handed over sovereignty to the Iraqi interim government, so he knows better than most about the challenges the country faces, and he's with me now.

Jeremy thank you very much for coming in.

There never seems - I sit there doing continuous news for News 24 - there never seems to be a flicker of news from Iraq that gives hope. Do you get that hopeless feeling as you watch what's going on?

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: We are all very depressed by the continuing violence - I mean it's a miserable business having to put up with two forms of violence in Iraq at the moment.

One is the terrorism that continues, just trying to knock the place into pieces for no particular political reason that is of any interest to Iraqis.

And secondly, these dispossessed Shia, under Moqtada al-Sadr, a minority of the Shia community wanting to use violence rather than the ballot box to express their feelings, to try and get themselves to be considered as something considerable in Iraq.

But there are all sorts of other things going on in Iraq that are a much better story and that doesn't get told because the violence overlays it. This place is going somewhere and we have to stay with it. PETER SISSONS: But can Iraq have peace while the Americans are there? There appear to be growing numbers of Iraqis who just feel their country is tainted by the occupiers and anyone associated with them.

As long as the Americans are there you will get resistance and you will get this spiral of violence as the Iraqis assisted by the Americans try to put it down and because they're assisted by the Americans they can't put it down.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: You've got to spiral the other way. If the Americans left the Iraqis would disagree with each other and turn to violence very quickly.

And all the way through this the majority of the Iraqis that we've talked to, that we've polled, that we listened to through their own media, seem to understand that if they were left to their own devices, without the Americans, without the British in the south, they would be worse off just left to their own devices. Which do you choose?

I think that both Washington and London have taken the fundamental decision and I think it's a decision that will last through elections, that we have to see this to a point where there is an established Iraqi government that can make its own decision, will you now please leave because we are competent to look after ourselves at last, thank you, goodbye. And that point has not reached.

PETER SISSONS: How important is this Iraqi national conference today, sort of Iraq's loya jirga?

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: I think it's absolutely vital because it's the first getting together of an Iraqi democratic basis. You remember we're in a staged process, which is why it looks so awful when violence is breaking out, but as we grind through the stages we're beginning to establish, now under Iraqi control, the structures of a democratic state.

This conference is to elect a council, an embryo parliament that will monitor the interim government and be the basis for an assembly and after elections in January which will be larger than this council but working on very much the same lines. So it's an experiment in the new parliament for Iraq, which will be the basis of the democratic process in 2005.

PETER SISSONS: But does it have any powers to remove Mr Alawi should it so choose? Will there need to be a vote of confidence in the present administration?

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: No because he goes in January anyway, there's no need for that. This is a seven month government and it's got to do its best with the continuity from the American-led administration that we've had.

The assembly elected in January will have the power to elect and remove a government and that's when you start getting a really effective democratic process.

PETER SISSONS: And Moqtada al-Sadr won't be at this meeting today, is that a - well I suppose that was to be expected - but it must be very regrettable that he hasn't accepted any invitation to take part in the political process.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: I think that's a mistake, I think that's a watershed for him, it seems so to me at this distance, because he was invited, he would have sent a representative - I don't think he would have turned up in person because there's an arrest warrant out for him.

He is accused of having been implicated in the murder of a cleric last year. But he could have sent representatives. He seems to have chosen violence in one particular very emotive spot, in Najaf, rather than the democratic process that is forming. I think that's a fundamental long term mistake.

PETER SISSONS: Mr Alawi's response to the Najaf negotiations breaking down yesterday was to talk tough. "If they won't lay down their arms, we'll cleanse the place." Now they can only do that, of course, with American help, which has more people flocking to Moqtada's banner.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: Yes, but I don't believe that Moqtada has a majority appeal in the country. Most Iraqis do not want a theocratic religious state. They want law and order. The Moqtada message is not one for all Iraqis.

PETER SISSONS: Well do you see the hand of Iran in this?

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: Not directly in what Moqtada is doing. I don't think that there is an alliance between the leaders in Tehran and Moqtada as such. He's never really been close to the Iranian leadership.

But Iran is watching. Iran does not want a complete American success, with the Americans moving on to the next target. Iran wants a state in Iraq that is friendly to Iran, that will trade with them, that will be a good neighbour, that will receive their pilgrims and that will be Shia compatible. So when it is going too well, they turn up the heat, when it is going too badly for stability in Iraq, they may be quite helpful. So I, I don't think that Iran lies behind the Moqtada rebellion, it's something internal to Iraq.

PETER SISSONS: How effective is the new Iraqi government being? It's still not safe for it to operate outside the green zone, outside the massive American protected compound that they, their ministers can't really walk the streets.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: No, because you are never quite sure where terrorism is going to strike, and this is a feature of modern terrorism in a state that is insecure.

I think that Iyad Alawi, in the circumstances, has done a huge job so far. He's a man of decision, of determination. He respects the need for Iraq to grow to democracy, but he realises that his first duty is to make the state safer than when he started. He's trying to do that. He doesn't have his own forces to do that, he needs foreign help, foreign money, foreign security assistance.

I think he was the right man for the job and I think that he is beginning to show Iraqis that they can have a leader that takes decisions that make their life better and in most parts of Iraq, where the news isn't playing, where the violence isn't happening, people are free to make their own choices, do their own trade, make their own living. And when that catches hold over an 18 month transition - remember they've got to have time - I think Alawi will be seen to have started something that led to a success.

PETER SISSONS: When you were last in the studio talking to Sir David, I think it was a couple of months ago, you said you were not sure, it was too early to tell whether the war had been worth it. Have you changed that view?

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: No. I come back to the point that this is an 18 month maybe a two year transition, and historians will have to judge it at that point and electors will have to judge, when the elections come, whether it's all been worth it at that point.

PETER SISSONS: Those who believe that Britain and America misled their voters into going to war, their fall back position is what's come to be know as the Saddam defence for going to war - although there were no weapons of mass destruction, the world is a safer place and Iraq is better place without Saddam. That doesn't actually seem to be very convincing at the moment, the Saddam defence.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK: No, but you use the argument with Robin Cook in the other direction. I think that Iraq is going to end up better than when it was under Saddam.

Iraqis think that. Every Iraqi we met - my wife was out there for a while and she talked to a wide range of Iraqi women, they all said 'Thank you for giving us the opportunity, thank you for getting rid of Saddam. We and you may be making a mess of some things now but at least we've got the opportunity.'

That is still there in Iraqi minds and whatever Britons think about the reasons for the war and whether there were weapons of mass destruction or not, we are engaged in something that has to turn out to be a success. We've got to stay with it until it is a success and then that will show whether it was worth it or not.

---

NB: this transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.

---