Iraq Inquiry: 'aftermath planning was dire'
Updated on 01 December 2009
The United States repeatedly ignored British efforts to improve 'dire' planning for the aftermath of the Iraq war, the official inquiry into the conflict has heard.
Senior diplomat Edward Chaplin said Tony Blair raised his concerns directly with president Bush but he claimed, there was a "real blind spot" in Washington, where leading officials believed it would be "all sweetness and light" after the invasion.
He also told the hearing, Britain considered that view "extremely optimistic".
Mr Chaplin, who was head of the Middle East section of the Foreign Office at the time of the invasion in March, said there was "a pretty dire state of lack of planning".
He said: "I think ministers were aware at their level. They constantly talked to their US opposite numbers for the need for proper aftermath planning."
Mr Chaplin, who became the British Ambassador to Baghdad in 2004, said the US State Department had initially started the planning for after the invasion but its work was discarded when the task was taken over by the Pentagon, which was hostile to United Nations involvement, as the invasion drew closer.
Asked whether the Pentagon took steps to involve Britain in the planning, Mr Chaplin said: "They didn't take many steps to involve their own colleagues in the administration in planning."
He added that Pentagon officials were happy to listen to their British counterparts but the UK's ideas never had "traction".
He said: "These points were made at all levels, including and up to the Prime Minister talking to President Bush."
