By Sam Macrory - 25th February 2011
The world is not a playground where you say 'we won't talk to the bullies'
Former Foreign Office minister Mike O’Brien
Mike O’Brien held one ministerial position or another for the entire duration of the last Labour government. For the most part he performed his ministerial tasks quietly, and away from the headlines.
However, in August 2002 O’Brien found himself making history in the most unlikely of surroundings. In the shade of a Bedouin tent situated in the Libyan desert, O’Brien became the first British minster for 19 years to meet with the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
"He bizarrely insisted on our two-hour meeting being held in this big Bedouin tent, watched over by his female guards,” recalls O’Brien, who lost his seat at the last election.
“He appeared articulate and confident, but he was also an eccentric showman. He was dressed in khaki combat trousers with a very odd bush hat which was turned up at the front."
While Gaddafi’s appearance – and actions – creates an impression to the wider world, it is not one which Gaddafi would recognise, according to O’Brien. “He believes himself to be respected across the world as a great political philosopher.”
Wishful thinking on Gaddafi’s part, but he is not, O’Brien adds, to be treated lightly. “He may be mad and brutal, but he’s not stupid. Nobody could run a country like that for 42 years unless they could manage the army, security services and various trappings of state.”
With the Libyan leader suspected of ordering the Lockerbie bombing, criticised for refusing to cooperate in the aftermath of the assassination of PC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy, and standing accused of an appalling human rights record back in Libya, O’Brien’s mission was controversial.
He insists, however, that it was both necessary and productive.
“He always knew that we didn’t like him and wanted rid of him,” O’Brien argues. “But we couldn’t remove him, short of war. We had to deal with him, so we did.”
For Gaddafi, worried that the US would target him in the wake of 9/11, the meeting was based on the need for self-preservation.
For O’Brien, there were four specific goals: to stop Gaddafi dealing with terrorists, to put an end to his plans for developing nuclear and chemical weapons, to force him to accept responsibility – and agree to compensation – for Lockerbie, and to apologise for the murder of PC Fletcher.
“We achieved the first three aims, but did not make much progress on the fourth,” says O’Brien. “We didn’t want him in power, but the opening of a dialogue very quickly produced real results – many of the things he would have been in possession of, he’s not.”
Gaddafi, O’Brien admits, over-estimated British intelligence. “We found out that he was developing more weapons programmes than we knew about. He assumed we knew, so he showed us. We developed – partly through a man called Musa Kusa, the head of Libyan intelligence, who I met on a number of occasions – a managed disarmament programme and an open dialogue with MI6. We picked up a lot of intelligence data. It was a major British foreign policy coup.”
Today, as Gaddafi clings to power, O’Brien’s opinion is clear. “We all hope he’s finished and that he will be gone soon. The West should clearly be on the side of democracy, no matter how uncomfortable it becomes in the short term. The intervention in Iraq made it seem as though siding with democracy was siding with the Bush regime. In reality, it mustn’t be.”
Eight-and-a-half years ago, however, O’Brien insists the UK had no alternative but to deal with the Libyan leader. “We had to take a pragmatic view and we still do, even if we dislike some of a particular country’s views on human rights. For example, we have debates with Russia and China.
There are all sorts of governments we disapprove of, and we have to deal with them. The world is not a playground where you say ‘we won’t talk to the bullies’. The government must look to the long term and decide what values it wants to promote and be willing to intervene and support those values.”
And for any foreign office minister who ends up in a similar position to that which O’Brien was placed – perhaps without the foreign guards in the desert – in 2002, he offers a final assessment. At times, there is no alternative but to “sup with a long spoon with despots like Gaddafi”. O’Brien’s successors will be hoping that any similar supping, however historic, will not be forced upon them.
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