Downing Street Says » Baker Report

» Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Baker Report

Asked if the Prime Minister and President Bush had spoken recently about James Baker, the PMOS said that they had not.

Put by the BBC that it would be fair to speculate the idea of Iran and Syria playing any part in the future of Iraq would be an anathema to the Government, the PMOS said that as with so much else that surrounded the Baker Report, which was not yet published, there was a lot of misinterpretation of where the Government was. We had not said that we were staying in Iraq for ever, but rather, that we would stay there until the Iraq security forces were, in the judgment of the Iraqi Government, capable of taking over. We had not said that we did not believe than Iran and Syria should have a role in world affairs, but we had said that they had a choice. As long as they continued to support terrorism, and the kind of activity that we had seen both in Iraq and elsewhere, then there was a problem. What the Prime Minister had said explicitly before was that they faced a choice. The PMOS reminded people that this was the Prime Minister who went to Syria to meet President Bashar al-Assad.

The BBC journalist said that he recalled that it was a great meeting. The PMOS replied that he recalled that it was a great press conference…The journalist said that he got the message!

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