Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [507]
* The US-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, which had begun in the first year of the Reagan Administration.
* See p. 258.
* For this meeting see pp. 746–8.
* For other discussions at this meeting see p. 759.
* The Helsinki Final Act of 1975 contained the following commitment: ‘The participating States regard as inviolable all one another’s frontiers as well as the frontiers of all States in Europe and therefore they will refrain now and in the future from assaulting these frontiers. Accordingly, they will also refrain from any demand for, or act of, seizure and usurpation of part or all of the territory of any participating State.’ However, the Final Act also provided that ‘frontiers can be changed, in accordance with international law, by peaceful means and by agreement’.
* See p. 767.
CHAPTER XXVII
No Time to Go Wobbly
The response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990
EVENTS AT ASPEN
On the morning of Wednesday 1 August 1990 the VC10 left Heathrow with me and my party aboard bound for Aspen, Colorado. The President was due to open the Aspen Institute Conference on the Thursday and I was to close it on the Sunday. I had gone out early in order to be present for his speech. At the time I left I already knew that the Iraqis were sending troops down to the border with Kuwait. The negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait which had been taking place in Jeddah had broken for the day but we understood that they were to be resumed. It therefore seemed that the Iraqi military action was a case of sabre rattling. We soon learnt that it was not. At 2 a.m. Kuwaiti time on Thursday 2 August Iraq carried out a full-scale military invasion — though claiming that it was an internal coup — and assumed total control.
An hour later — early evening on Wednesday, Colorado time — Charles Powell telephoned me from his hotel to tell me the news and I decided at once to instruct two ships in Penang and Mombasa, both about a week’s sailing time away, to make for the Gulf while the situation developed. We already had one ship of the Armilla patrol in the Gulf — HMS York, at Dubai. First thing the following morning I learnt in a note from Charles about the latest situation. Other Arab governments had evidently been caught off balance. The Arab League of Foreign Ministers meeting in Cairo had failed to agree a statement. King Hussein was trying to excuse the Iraqi action on the grounds that the Kuwaitis had been unnecessarily difficult. The ruling families in the Gulf were alarmed. With strong British support the UN Security Council had passed a resolution condemning Iraq for its action and calling for total withdrawal and immediate negotiations. Back in London, Douglas Hurd — competent professional that he was — had ordered the freezing of Kuwaiti assets in Britain, the Iraqis unfortunately having only debts. An immediate question now was whether Saddam Hussein would go over the border and seize Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. (This was indeed important: but I was convinced from the start that it must not divert us from the need to get Saddam Hussein out of the territory he had already seized by an act of illegal aggression.)
I was staying at the guesthouse to Ambassador Henry Catto’s ranch while all this was going on. I read Charles’s note, listened to the news and then went for a walk to sort things out in my own mind. By the time I got back Charles and Sir Antony Acland, our ambassador, were waiting for me. We established from the White House that President Bush was still coming to Aspen and would arrive later that morning. As is my wont, I set about arguing through the whole problem with them and by the end had defined the two main points. By the time I was due to meet him at the main ranch I was quite clear what we must do.
Fortunately, the President began by asking me what I thought. I told him my conclusions in the clearest and most straightforward terms. First, aggressors must