Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [100]
The other main UAE state is Dubai, where I arrived on Wednesday. Its ruler was Sheik Rashid. When I arrived he was already on the airport tarmac to greet me, even though he had already seen me in Abu Dhabi. By this time he was elderly and unwell. But his powerful features, above all his eyes, still conveyed shrewdness and courage. There is a picture of the young Sheik on horseback, holding his sword aloft, marching in from the desert to claim his land: it struck me that the qualities of his generation would be difficult to repeat in the more comfortable conditions of today.
Dubai is enchanting. Like the other Gulf states that I visited, it is full of flowers, kept absolutely perfectly and tended every day. But it is also a thriving port. Like Bahrain, but unlike some other cities on the shores of the Gulf, it was established long before oil was discovered. From here Arab traders sailed to the Red Sea and to the Indian Ocean.
I also visited Muscat in Oman. Its leader, Sultan Qaboos, has always been one of Britain’s closest friends in the Gulf. Historic forts guard the entrance to the port of Muscat. As elsewhere in the Gulf, development has been very carefully controlled to blend in with the traditional style of buildings. I discussed with the Sultan Oman’s requirements for military equipment. Later when the price of oil fell and Oman’s finances were somewhat less healthy, we suggested that they should purchase the Ground Attack Hawk and Trainer rather than the more expensive Tornado. The Sultan and I discussed the situation in the Gulf and the Iran-Iraq War. He was always a source of valuable information about events in Iran. We too were concerned that the war remained confined to those two states and to the northern end of the Gulf. We had stationed the three ships of the Armilla Patrol in the area in 1980 to keep the sea lanes open. My talks with the Sultan and other Gulf rulers laid the groundwork for later co-operation when the Iran-Iraq War threatened Gulf shipping and, subsequently, when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
My final visit on this occasion was to see Sheik Khalifa, the Emir of Qatar. Qatar has the biggest natural deposits of gas anywhere in the world and the country is very wealthy. I discussed the involvement of British firms in the development of these resources.
The pattern of the visit, combining diplomacy, commerce and private discussion would be repeated on many occasions in the years ahead. Even on this busy trip I had not been able to visit all the important players in the ‘great game’ of the Gulf. I would return in September to do so, visiting Bahrain and Kuwait on my way to the Commonwealth Conference in Melbourne.
THE OTTAWA G7
My second G7 summit — President Reagan’s and President Mitterrand’s first — took place in Montebello, just outside Ottawa, where I arrived on the afternoon of Sunday 19 July to be met by Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Montebello had been chosen as the site of the conference because the G7 heads of government were determined to try to avoid the relentless pressure from the media which increasingly disrupted proceedings. After each afternoon session Pierre Trudeau flew by helicopter back in to Ottawa to brief the journalists. We enjoyed a kind of splendid isolation at the Château Montebello, sometimes called the world’s biggest log cabin but in fact a very luxurious hotel. It had also been decided to try to inject rather more informality into discussions. Perhaps because of the presence of Ronald Reagan, with his effortless amiability, we all called one another by our Christian names. Something I liked less was the decision that everyone should dress informally. In my experience this kind of approach always presents more rather than fewer problems in choosing what to wear. The Japanese, for example, wore the smartest white ‘barbecue’ suits that I have ever seen — and looked all the more formal beside the westerners in open-neck shirts and slacks.