Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 10 December, 2006 10:00
Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

Page 1


10th December 2006.



 
All excerpts to be attributed to Sky News’ ‘Sunday Live with Adam Boulton.’.  

 
Bolton:  I caught up with a member of the study group, the former US Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger and asked him what he thought about the reaction.

Eagleburger:  Look I can understand why they would say its surrender because what we are saying is that the way in which things have been going it hasn’t gone well.  That there are some very serious problems that are going to have to be faced and that those, to face those problems will require us to change course, at least to some degree from the way we have been proceeding in the past.  I don’t consider that surrender, I do consider it recognition, however, of the fact that we have ourselves a serious problem and that our search for a solution thus far has been unrewarding.

Bolton:  Is victory as George Bush termed it, with Tony Blair, possible?

Eagleburger:  Victory, it does depend on how you talk about it, victory in the sense of total success on our part?  No it’s not possible.  It would be a victory if most of these recommendations could be implemented and followed and led to the results we think they will but I would say now if I had to define victory, it is that we will in one way or another be able to establish a reasonably stable Iraqi government in a reasonably atmosphere where the other parties, the other countries in the area, will have come together with us and the Iraqis and we will have been able to sort out the differences and come up with solutions to the various problems there.

Bolton:  Given that the report actually says that the situation is deteriorating what are the chances of even achieving that?

Eagleburger:  You know the answer to that question I think depends very much on how, there are three recommendations in that series of recommendations that ought to be looked at most carefully.  One is the military situation and there we call for a draw down over time.  There is what we call, what is the word we use for it, but anyway when we bring the parties together and hopefully get some sort of rationalisation between the various parties and then the third is the security issues within the country.  But it is that second one, namely bringing the parties, the Shi’as and the Sunis and so forth together and getting them to at least start talking to each other.

Bolton:  Do you agree with Tony Blair that the core issue in the Middle East, even in the instability in Iraq, is the Palestinian- Israeli situation?

Eagleburger:  You know I’ve spent since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger I’ve been up and down with this issue all of my diplomatic life and most of the time I have felt that negotiations were not going to do anything for the Israelis and they would always have to pay the bill.  There is no question in terms of when we talked, when the commission talked to various advisers and various people who viewed the situation and had advice for us, every single one of them said what Tony Blair has said.  Namely you are not going to get anywhere in the Iraq situation unless you are prepared to as well bring the Israelis and the Palestinians onto the negotiating table.  I was not prepared to accept that, there was a long time that I was not, but in this particular case, I think, well not only because it influences everything else, but because there is a real opportunity for the Israelis and the Palestinians to make some head way in an negotiation if we are involved and are helping them with those negotiations.  So I accept what Tony Blair said, there was a time I would not have.

Bolton:  Do you think Tony Blair himself has much credibility, can achieve very much?  He’s going back to the region next month.

Eagleburger:  I, well I must tell you we had a conversation, well the commission did and I don’t want to get into your internal politics but I have always been impressed with any time that we’ve talked, any of us talked with Tony Blair or when I did and I thought in talking to us he made a great deal of sense.  So whether that means he will have any credibility in the region I can’t judge that one.  When you have a Prime Minister who goes off to negotiate or discuss but has announced ahead of time that he’s leaving I don’t know whether that effects his credibility or not but I have to tell you that I think he’s right on most of what he’s saying.

Bolton:  A lot of people in Britain seized on the comments of a State Department Adviser, Kendall Myers, who stated publicly that he thought the so called ‘special relationship’ was in fact a one way relationship and that Britain gets nothing out of it. 

Eagleburger:  The fellow who said that is an idiot.  Somebody in our State Department?

Bolton:  An adviser, yeah.

Eagleburger:  Well if I were still in the State Department he wouldn’t be advising any longer. But there’s a, look, again this is another issue, mainly the relationships with the UK and with Western Europe that I’ve spent a lot of time on.  And in case you guys and the other side of the Atlantic missed it there was a long time when in fact the Soviet Union did not do in Western Europe what a lot of people thought they were going to do and it was at least in part because we were part of the NATO alliance.  I think that says that the UK, as well as others, got some advantage out of this relationship and I also remember the Falkland Islands when I was in the State Department working very hard, and I wouldn’t have said this while I was still in government, but working very hard to help the British succeed in regaining the Falkland Islands.  I thought they, you got something out of that.

Bolton:  But specifically has Tony Blair got anything out of George Bush do you think?

Eagleburger:  I don’t know, clearly he hasn’t gotten a great deal of popularity in the UK out of it!  What can I say?  I don’t think George Bush has taken advantage of it.  I think Tony Blair, my view of it is that Tony Blair decided to do in Iraq what you have done because he thought it was the right thing to do and he still seems to say that.  I don’t think he has been taken to the cleaners by George Bush if that’s the other side of the question you are asking.  I think the fact of the matter is that the one thing in the twentieth century, now the twenty-first, that has made this a sensible century if anything has, sensible times if anything has is in fact the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.  And one of the things we have gotten out of that relationship over a very long period of time, and I’m the first to admit it, is you are more mature than we are sometimes.  I think that has had a leveling effect on some of the decisions we have made over many, many years.  On the other hand I think the British have got a great deal out of it as well in terms of military cooperation and the development of weapons and so forth and so on so I think it’s been a productive relationship.

Bolton:  Thank you very much indeed.

Eagleburger:  Thank you.