Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume 2

by Charles Moore

  Mrs Thatcher’s chief aims across the Middle East were to assist and, where necessary, restrain the United States, to be vigilant against the Soviet Union and to improve British export markets with Arab countries. This meant gently chiding America for not being tougher on Israel, but also siding firmly with the United States when solidarity was required. Under the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel,† for example, a multinational force (known as MFO) was required to supervise the agreed withdrawal of Israel from the Sinai peninsula in 1981. It was not UN-sponsored, because Camp David had enraged the other Arab nations, but the United States did not want to do it alone. In what Carrington called ‘the dirtiest of tricks’, the United States asked Britain to take part in the force, without, at that stage, asking other European nations too. Reagan personally wrote to Mrs Thatcher to seek her help, causing Sir Nicholas Henderson,* the British Ambassador in Washington, to set out the Foreign Office view in a letter to Carrington: ‘The difficulties for us in accepting arise from the association with the Camp David process and with an American regime that has been looking increasingly pro-Israeli: and these are particularly worrisome when you are hoping to have dealings with the Saudis and to get on to terms with Arafat.’81 Although, unlike Carrington, she had no desire to get on terms with Arafat, Mrs Thatcher did not welcome Reagan’s invitation: she wanted to avoid damaging relations with Arab states which were often good customers for British defence equipment. She also feared the overstretch of British military commitments.

  Reagan tracked her down on the telephone to the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool, where she was attending the annual Conservative Party conference and facing revolt over public spending from Cabinet colleagues. With a good deal of ‘Oh Lord, and I’m interrupting you’ and ‘I’m going to be a pest again,’ he begged her to take part in the MFO, in order to get Continental Europe, Australia and Canada to do the same. Mrs Thatcher told him it was all most unfair that Britain had to go first: ‘I saw Crown Prince Fahd† [of Saudi Arabia] myself – I had him to lunch at No. 10 – and asked him flat out what would be the effect in the Arab world … He thought it would be very adverse indeed … I simply cannot afford to lose the business.’82 If she were to agree, ‘France would then get the whole lot, and I’d get the unemployment.’ Perhaps conscious that, given Sadat’s assassination a few days earlier, Mrs Thatcher would anyway feel strong moral pressure eventually to give in to his request, Reagan elegantly withdrew at this point. In due course, Mrs Thatcher did agree – with France and Italy also contributing – that Britain should provide a very small headquarters unit to the MFO. To general surprise, this proved largely uncontroversial. In her dealings with the Reagan administration, Mrs Thatcher much preferred to grant favours and bank them to gain new ones in return, rather than refuse them point-blank.

  A similar motive governed Mrs Thatcher’s reluctant agreement to a much more dangerous venture. After the Israelis had invaded Lebanon in June 1982, in order to punish the PLO, they surrounded the organization’s headquarters in Beirut, effectively holding it hostage. Israel was eventually persuaded to let the PLO evacuate under the supervision of a new multinational force formed explicitly for this purpose. This force, known as the MNF, was led by the US, with French and Italian help and without British. But the day after the PLO had left, the Lebanese President-elect, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated, and the MNF returned at the request of the Lebanese government. This time, the United States asked Britain to take part, on a small scale. Once again, Mrs Thatcher was most reluctant, but once again she gave in. Matters got worse in 1983, because, although Israeli forces eventually agreed to withdraw, Syrian forces refused. By August, the MNF had become so closely identified with the Lebanese government that it came under fire from pro-Syrian factions. As the killing worsened, Mrs Thatcher became more concerned not to get deeper in and said as much to Reagan when visiting Washington in September. On 23 October, a huge truck bomb blew up the US Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 US personnel. A simultaneous attack on the French barracks killed 58 people. The US invasion of Grenada (see Chapter 5) followed two days later.

  Naturally, the United States was tempted to retaliate. Equally naturally, Mrs Thatcher wanted to avoid this. The British contingent had not been bombed, but she was fearful that it would be, all in furtherance of what she saw as a pointless internecine dispute. She told Reagan’s envoy, Kenneth Dam, that ‘the MNF did not have purposeful objectives at the moment’.83 The implication was that she wanted to get Britain out. She was also, because of the invasion of Grenada, particularly jumpy. After George Shultz had met Geoffrey Howe to discuss the matter, she wrote to Reagan: ‘I was somewhat relieved to note that George Shultz made it clear that there would be no hasty reaction on your part by way of retaliation for the attacks on your Marines. I know you will think twice and three times before doing anything that could damage the process of reconciliation and put in further danger the contingents in the MNF.’84

  Because of the Grenada embarrassment, the Americans felt compelled to consult Mrs Thatcher, but not to follow her advice. Invoking ‘self-defence’, Reagan signed an order to bomb the Sheikh Abdullah Barracks in Lebanon, which were run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and may have been the headquarters from which terrorism was directed. But then, paralysed by disputes within the administration, his order was not executed and it was left to the French to carry out the attack alone. The MNF stayed on, uneasily. In early February 1984, the Lebanese government fell apart, and Reagan was persuaded to deploy the Marines offshore, keeping them in the relative safety of US ships. Mrs Thatcher told him she had had enough: ‘The latest advice from our people on the spot … is that it is now virtually impossible for our contingent to play a useful role and that there is a greatly increased risk of their incurring casualties.’85 She was prepared to co-ordinate timing of withdrawal with the United States so that no one could ‘drive wedges between us’, but that was all.

  The thing ended in farce. On the same day she wrote to Reagan, he informed her that he would redeploy offshore that evening. Britain therefore got ready to withdraw simultaneously. Then Reagan changed his mind, and asked Mrs Thatcher to hold off. Mrs Thatcher cabled him politely but firmly. She understood how difficult it all was but had ‘decided that we must go ahead’ in the course of the next twenty-four hours. ‘I am sorry that we cannot meet your request to “go into neutral” but frankly it came too late.’86 Reagan’s self-countermanded decision to redeploy leaked to the media, so he redeployed anyway. ‘Our troops left in a rush, amid ridicule from the French and utter disappointment and despair from the Lebanese,’ wrote George Shultz in his memoirs.87 In what was literally a parting shot, US forces shelled pro-Syrian positions from USS New Jersey, causing widespread condemnation, but none from Mrs Thatcher. She was relieved to be out, and suppressed whatever irritation she may have felt against the President she had tried to help.

  As the years passed, Mrs Thatcher’s confidence grew and her views about the Middle East gradually changed. From merely reporting moderate Arab concerns to the Americans, she began to develop some policy of her own. In 1981, she passed on to Reagan comments made by Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia, and the rulers of Kuwait and Bahrain:

  the dominant strand in all they said to me was of grave disappointment with and alienation from the United States. I found this most upsetting but felt that I must let you know. I have the feeling that these moderate Arabs hesitate to express the strength of their feelings directly to you and your Government. You may, therefore, not have the whole picture. Those to whom I talked argue that your Government is so wholly committed to Israel that it ignores the rightful claims of the Palestinians. It thereby creates acutely difficult problems for the moderate Arab leaders.88

  Increasingly, she tried to make herself the Western champion of these moderates, especially King Hussein.

  In choosing Hussein as her main interlocutor on the Middle East, Mrs Thatcher was in the mainstream of British policy. Jordan itself, a
nd the Hashemite monarchy which ruled it, were creations of the British colonial era, and the country’s security was closely bound up with British protection. Mrs Thatcher also had a strong personal fondness for the man himself. Hussein, one of whose wives was British, had been educated (like Mark Thatcher) at Harrow, and had been an officer cadet at Sandhurst. He was very pro-British, and spoke the English language in an English idiom. Often Western leaders found conversation difficult with Arab rulers; with Hussein this was not a problem. Like Mrs Thatcher herself, he maintained a courtly protocol without being haughty. He had man-of-action charm (he was an accomplished pilot), a courage which had helped him survive numerous plots against him and a sense of honour, all of which she admired. He was extremely respectful towards her. According to John Coles, her foreign affairs private secretary who went on to become ambassador to Jordan in 1984, she was also ‘intrigued by the accounts he could give her of what was going on’,89 since he maintained relations with leaders who, for her, were largely beyond the pale, such as Hafez Assad of Syria and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. King Hussein, for his part, understood Mrs Thatcher’s closeness to Reagan and saw her as his best conduit through the Washington labyrinth to the top.

  From her early days as prime minister, Mrs Thatcher had cultivated Hussein’s friendship. When, in 1981, he gave her a paper setting out his ideas for the region (‘Total withdrawal for total peace’), she wrote on top of it, ‘This is the most cogent argument that has ever been presented by the Arab world in that it deploys concepts fundamental to American thought,’90 and she commended it to Reagan. After winning her landslide victory in the 1983 general election, she took time to think through her Middle East policy and held a meeting at Chequers in September to discuss it. Under the general conclusion that ‘It was more important to concentrate on the realities of the situation than to think in terms merely of improving our posture,’91 the meeting agreed several aims. These included that it would be hard to get much out of the United States until the presidential election of 1984 was finished, that Mrs Thatcher herself should get more involved with President Reagan on the subject, that the Gulf needed more attention and that ‘the stability of Jordan was ever more important’.

  Mrs Thatcher’s actions in the ensuing years usually followed these priorities. In June 1984, she wrote to tell King Hussein that she had privately asked Reagan to consider a fresh initiative in the Middle East once re-elected – as it was widely (and correctly) predicted that he would be – in November. When Shimon Peres replaced Shamir as prime minister of Israel in September 1984, she thought this change presented an opportunity, and she so advised Reagan at Camp David in December.92 In February the following year, she opposed the suggestion of an EEC initiative. She was more interested in the news, which she received before it became publicly known, of an agreement between Hussein and Arafat. For the first time, the PLO committed itself to working with Jordan for ‘a just and peaceful settlement’ of the Israel–Palestine dispute.

  Mrs Thatcher threw herself into supporting Hussein’s initiative. When she saw Reagan in Washington at the end of February, she spoke publicly and privately in favour of it, and wrote to Hussein to say that the President’s attitude had been ‘very encouraging’.93 Hussein, who usually copied his letters to and from Reagan to Mrs Thatcher, wrote a passionate appeal to the US President: the ‘very credibility of the United States in the entire Arab world’ was at stake, and the moment was now. ‘It [a solution] could conceivably only come in the second term of office of President Ronald S. Reagan.’94* Mrs Thatcher backed him up. ‘The King’, she wrote to the President, ‘is clearly under considerable pressure and feels it … He is looking for evidence of your personal support for his initiative.’ The next step, she argued, would be for the relevant United States Assistant Secretary, Richard Murphy,† to agree the membership of a Jordanian–Palestinian delegation which could be received in Washington, in order to put the Palestinians under pressure to negotiate along lines acceptable to the US. This was a bolder version than Reagan’s, who wanted the ‘Murphy meeting’ to take place only in Amman, Jordan’s capital. ‘We must all keep in mind the importance of weakening the influence of those Arab states who would all too readily look to the Soviet Union for help,’95 Mrs Thatcher concluded.

  At first, everything seemed to go well. Hussein had what he told Mrs Thatcher were ‘very fruitful talks’96 with Reagan. The first Jordanian–Palestinian delegation meeting would take place in Amman, he said, and this would lead to a Jordanian–explicitly-PLO delegation being created which would publicly accept the key UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.‡ She did hesitate, however, at Hussein’s suggestion that a Jordanian–PLO delegation should be received in London. Such a move would, of course, confer considerable legitimacy upon the delegation and she hesitated to do this without US support. She thus argued that the delegation, however composed, should be received in Washington first, London second. She told Hussein – and then told Reagan what she had told the King – that his idea that the United States might soon meet a Jordanian–PLO delegation was ‘running ahead of the game’.97 No British meeting should ‘short-circuit’ anything between Reagan and Hussein.

  Charles Powell quickly reinforced her caution about the suggested encounter in London. ‘Such a meeting is our high card,’ he told her, ‘and it is a great mistake to play it too early.’98 He added that the Foreign Office was ignoring the difference between a delegation of Jordanians and Palestinians and one of Jordanians and the PLO. Mrs Thatcher repeated Powell’s ‘high card’ phrase to Geoffrey Howe, but herself suggested the idea that the two moderate PLO men whom Hussein had proposed to her – a West Bank mayor and an Anglican bishop – could be received as private individuals rather than as PLO representatives. Two drafts of a letter to Hussein, one from the Foreign Office and one from Powell, were composed. ‘I much prefer yours,’ Mrs Thatcher scribbled on the latter’s,99 and it was sent. The Powell version told the King that if his chosen PLO men would publicly reject violence while in London and sign up to resolutions 242 and 338, Mrs Thatcher would be happy for Howe to see them as part of the delegation.100

  As the summer progressed, the White House became more nervous about what Hussein was proposing. The Americans continued to insist that the delegation he was putting together remain free of PLO representation. Reagan also told Hussein he would not authorize any Murphy meeting anywhere without ‘assurances of prompt and tangible movement towards direct negotiations’ with Israel.101 Hussein replied angrily that the United States had been ‘unresponsive or negative to every single item contained in my proposal’: ‘with a heavy heart’, he could not accept the new conditions for the Murphy meeting.102

  The American rejection came shortly before Mrs Thatcher’s proposed visit to Egypt and to Jordan, the first to the latter by any sitting British prime minister. She had agreed to the trip partly because John Coles, her private secretary for foreign affairs until mid-1984, had just become the ambassador there, and also because she felt fired up by Hussein’s cause. When she met the King at the Nadwa Palace in Amman on 19 September 1985, she found him in an emotional state. Everything had ‘come to the end’, he told her. The Americans were unreasonable to expect independent Palestinians since ‘one could not find a Palestinian who was not selected by the PLO’: all the others ‘feared for their lives’.103 The White House condition of ‘direct and visible contacts with the Israelis’ at this stage was simply impossible, he went on. Mrs Thatcher shared his mood. She would confront President Reagan with the ‘enormity’ of the consequences of the failure of Hussein’s initiative, she told Hussein, and would speak out in her press conference in Amman the following day: ‘It was no good her coming here and calling on others to take risks for peace unless Britain was prepared to do its part.’104 She would try to press ahead with the Hussein initiative herself.

  The dinner that evening in the British Ambassador’s residence for the King and Mrs Thatcher turned into a dramatic occasion. The Jordanian Pr
ime Minister, Zaid Rifai, ‘spent the bulk of the time’, recalled the host, John Coles, ‘moving between the dinner table and the phone in my study’. He was trying to persuade the Palestinian members of the proposed delegation, themselves PLO members, to agree a statement about their visit to London and ‘make clear their commitment to peaceful negotiations’.105 ‘When we sat down to dinner there was no agreement that the delegation would be received in London. By the coffee, there was.’

  Immediately this was settled, Mrs Thatcher cabled Reagan to inform him. She wanted, she began bluntly, ‘to let you know how worried I am by the absence of progress following up King Hussein’s peace initiative’.106 Everything had been going well, she continued, until ‘your people’ set the conditions of direct, visible Jordanian–Israeli contact. She reminded the President of the assassination of the King’s father Abdullah, in 1951. Failure of Hussein’s scheme now ‘could again prove fatal for this courageous and steadfast family’: ‘I do not see that anything is lost by a meeting with the joint delegation.’ The British government would be ready to meet it in London, with the Palestinians represented by ‘two well-known moderates’, who would make the statements agreed over the telephone at dinner ‘publicly when they come to London’. She told Reagan that she proposed to announce all this at her press conference the next day. This she did.