Interview with BBC radio 4, Today programme, London 18.03.2003
Q. - The French Ambassador in London, Gérard Errera, is with me in the studio. Good Morning.
GE - Good morning.
Q. - The charge against France is that, by threatening to veto any resolution that came along, your president effectively torpedoed the diplomatic process and, I suppose, to that extent, must be held responsible for the inevitability of war.
GE - Well, I think that some have not resisted the temptation to play the blame game to excuse or explain their own choices. I don’t think that is productive. It’s not helpful, and anyway there is a limit to the power of spin.
Q. - What is you answer to that charge?
GE - Well, the truth is this: that resolution never had a chance to get a majority of the Security Council with or without the negative vote of France. And why that? This is because not only France, but a vast majority around the world and in the Security Council, thought and thinks that the rush to war is not justified.
Q. - But you prejudge that, don’t you, by threatening to veto it, you effectively prejudge the outcome. Countries that might have been wavering realize there is no point at all in them coming on side with Britain and America because you were going to veto it in the end anyway.
GE - No. We did not prejudge because this has been our position all along. We have always been saying that we unanimously agreed on the fact that inspections had to be carried out for the disarmament of Iraq. The point on which the international community and the Security Council were unanimous is disarmament and, for that, inspections have to be carried out. Inspectors, report after report, have told us that inspections were carried out. And, just to answer your point about the countries not willing after that, there is a fact: a few days after the President, President Chirac, reaffirmed our position, it was said again and again…
Q. - …no, no, no, it was a new position that you’d veto everything…
GE - …Chile, one of the six undecided countries, put a new compromise proposal on the table, this proposal was shot down by the spokesman of the White House even before it reached the Security Council table (…) which means, if I may, two things. One is that these countries were not satisfied with the proposals which are on the table. And second, that they were still willing to negotiate even after President Chirac had reaffirmed our position.
Q. - Yes but if this really was France’s position, you say "reaffirmed" it, but most people saw it as a new position, why on earth did France sign up to resolution 1441 which, among other things, clearly threatens "serious consequences" to Iraq?
GE - But it was not the first time. May I remind you that, on 2 March, on Breakfast with David Frost, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dominique de Villepin, said or asked: "Do we need a second resolution? No. Are we going to oppose a second resolution? Yes." That was 2 March, it was not a few days ago…
Q. - …but that doesn’t answer the question why France signed up to 1441, and, then, in the view of Britain and the United States was not willing to follow through on the consequences of what it had itself signed up to?
GE - The resolution 1441 to which, I think, and everybody agrees we contributed in order to get the unanimous vote of the Security Council, including Syria, including Russia, was about an objective: disarmament, and a method, inspections. What we unanimously agreed was that inspectors would go back there, then would do their job that is to verify and to destroy, and then, will report to the Security Council. Then there were two steps: the first step was for the inspectors to report if there were an impasse, if there were a stalemate, then the Security Council would have to assess and to decide what to do, not excluding any option, including the use of war. We have never excluded the use of war, (…) we have never excluded the use of force, but with the condition that it will be the last resort, and it will be authorized by the Security Council, as the Charter of the UN says.
Q. - A lot of people look at what’s happened and say that France has effectively shot herself in the foot in the sense that the two forums that give France a great say in world affairs - one is the Security Council, the other is the European Union, and both look deeply wounded by the diplomatic shenanigans of the past few weeks.
GE - Well, no, I don’t think that’s right. I think there is the UN Charter. This UN Charter states how a resolution is adopted. A resolution is adopted if there is a majority of votes and if there is no contrary vote by one permanent member.
Q. - Even Kofi Annan recognizes that the Security Council has been gravely damaged by this.
GE - Well the question is not if it has been damaged. The question is "why was it damaged, who broke the unanimity?". There was unanimity on resolution 1441 which was reached after weeks and weeks of negotiation between all of us, and this second resolution was put there. The only purpose of this second resolution was to pave the way for war, was to prepare war.
Q. - Is European Union deeply divided, surely it is now?
GE - Of course the European Union is divided, there is no secret about it, and the important thing is that, for all of us, to see to it that, in the future, the European Union countries be more united and they are united today. They were united in the fact that the Security Council has to be at the core of the whole process.
Q. - Ambassador, thank you very much indeed for coming.
GE - Thank you./.