Baker: We would not have won the vote without Geneva. We simply wouldn't. We won the vote 52 to 48 and those people who were most aggressively opposing the use of force have themselves said that in the aftermath of the Geneva meeting opposition to our use of force eroded. So it was an idea that germinated with the President. It was the right idea. It worked, exactly the way it should have worked.

Q: Did the President discuss with you, what he would do if he lost the vote?

Baker: Oh, I think we would have gone ahead anyway, I think that even if we had lost the vote. I think as Commander in Chief with his constitutional responsibilities he would have gone forward. The risk in going to the Congress though for a vote frankly was greater than the risk of trying to pull together an international coalition for a use of force resolution in the Security Council because our strategy was that we never would have actually brought it to a vote in the Security Council unless we knew we had it won. And if you go back and look at the record of my trips around to try and build support for the use of force resolution you will never see, in all of those trips and visits and public statements and press conferences, any acknowledgement that we actually were going to submit a resolution for a vote until we knew we had the votes. With the Congress it was a little bit different situation.

Q: What was the difference in approach between General Scowocroft and yourself?

Baker: Well I think that Brent might have been a little bit more willing to dispense with any face to face meeting. I don't think that he liked the idea when the President first suggested it of Aziz coming to Washington and Baker going to Baghdad because he saw possible complications in that. And I think also he was of the view that we didn't need to go to the Congress that we should just go ahead and do what we had to do under the Commander in Chief clause of the constitution. That was not the President's view, the President's view was 'I do not want history to judge that I had acted precipitously or impetuously I want people to see that we've left no stone unturned in a search for a peaceful resolution of this, albeit an unconditional withdrawal.' Not give anything but at least make the effort diplomatically and politically and I would like to have the support of the congress and American people although I don't acknowledge that I have to have congressional approval.

Q: I'm told that everywhere you went you had a big list of Senators and Congressmen to call.

Baker: I really was not as active in the lobbying effort as I would have been had I been in Washington but I was making calls from the road even though I was out there on the road. Once the President had made the decision to go to the Congress then we really turned loose and did everything we could to get the votes and we were fortunately successful. But, the Geneva meeting was what was really , key to that success.

The day of the deadline the President called me at some point during the day, and asked me if I could come over for lunch and I said 'Sure'. And I went over and just the two of us had lunch in the residence, and we ate in the family dining room up on the, I guess it's the second floor of the residence. And he was reflective, he was convinced that he was doing the right thing. Obviously he had a great deal of responsibility on his shoulders and I'm sure he felt that. After all he and he alone had to make the decision about committing all of these forces to the war. We had 550,000 Americans in the Gulf by that time, we had people particularly who were opposed to the use of force suggesting casualty estimates in the thousands and it was a very heavy burden of responsibility that he bore and I think he was quite aware of that.

Q: What carried him through that? What was his sense of the nature of this conflict?

Baker: He knew was doing the right thing. He felt it literally, I remember at one point he said the military had told me over and over and over how it's going to turn out and they cannot be that wrong. We have provided everything that they have asked for. There's not anything that they've asked that we haven't provided. Having,said all those things though and having recognised all those things, he still was committing the nation to war and that's a heavy, heavy responsibility. He was convinced, as I was, that he had done the right thing. Absolutely convinced that we'd gone about it in the right way, that we really had left no stone unturned. That we had the entire international community behind us. That not only was this in the national interest of the United States and its allies but it was the right thing to do and it was the right thing to do morally, politically and in the national interests. It was what the United States should do as leader of the free world. The diplomatic and political and military decisions that had been made leading up to it had been handled in the right way and he was very much at peace with his decision but recognised the awesome responsibility that he had.

Q: Did President Bush ever intimate to you when he thought war became inevitable?

Baker: No, I never really had a discussion with him about that but I think he was probably of that view before the rest of us. He certainly was quite ready to move with the augmentation decision in November. I think he had concluded by then that economic sanctions weren't gonna cut it.

Q: The deadline has passed, the target list has been approved, you start calling around. One of the most important calls you make is the Soviet Foreign Minister, could you describe that call?

Baker: I recall calling the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, at the time having replaced Shevardnahze, to tell him that the air war was going to begin. I think I called him about an hour before the air war was due to begin and he called me back within 10 or 15 minutes with a personal request from Gorbachev to President Bush to please delay it to give him time to make one last appeal to Baghdad. And my recollection is I said something like 'Well there's too much that's been put in train, Sasha, we can't call this off now, and I'm sorry but we won't be able to accommodate that request' and at that point we were only about 20 to 25 minutes away and the aircraft I'm sure were already on their way.

Q: What do you remember of that evening when the air war began--were you watching t.v.?

Baker: I was watching CNN at my office at the State Department and I remember thinking this is the only time that I will probably ever watch a war begin on television in which I had played a significant part. And also I remember one of the correspondents coming on the air and saying nothing's happening here, there's nothing going on, I think may be there was an air raid siren going off, but nothing is happening at all. And all of a sudden things started happening outside the window there. The anti aircraft started going off and bombs started falling. My recollection is, and I'm not sure about this, but I think that it started a little early. I remember thinking to myself golly they're 10, 15, 20 minutes early from the time that had been agreed upon.

Q: The next night the first scuds are fired at Israel. Did keeping Israel out of the war matter?

Baker: Yes, I think it mattered. I'd been very careful to get firm commitments from all our Arab allies that if, Iraq attacked Israel and Israel had to retaliate they would stay with us. And they said they would but it was very hard to get those commitments from them, they didn't like making those commitments because they were worried about public opinion in their countries and everybody really was worried about Saddam Hussein's ability to turn this from an international community war against Iraq to get him out of Kuwait to a war between Iraq and Israel on the behalf of the Arab world kind of thing. So it was important that Israel exercise restraint and she exercised great restraint and the international community was extraordinarily appreciative and grateful for that. It was not easy for Israel to demonstrate that restraint and it wouldn't have happened frankly had it not been for Yitzak Shamir, the Prime Minister who was under great pressure to respond and retaliate, particularly from people like Misha Adams, his Defence Minister and others.

Q: What was the - the closest, do you think that they came to moving into action?

Baker: I think they came fairly close to moving in to action but we would never agree to give them the codes that were necessary for them to be able to identify friendly aircraft, that is US aircraft. And because of that there was always the risk that if they had retaliated they might have shot down an American aircraft or an American aircraft might have shot down an Israeli aircraft which would have been a tragic circumstance and I think that's one of the reasons that they did not retaliate. But another reason I think was you know the full force of the international community and the full force of the United States dealing with one of the greatest threats to Israel's security in the form of Iraq.

Q: Throughout the war what was the message you were giving to Mr. Shamir?

Baker: The message to Prime Minister Shamir and the Israeli Government was that we were dealing with the greatest threat to the security of Israel, Iraq, Israel's implacable foe and that it would complicate that task if Israel felt the need to herself become involved in the war. It would make it a lot more difficult to convince the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Syrians, and others to remain passive.

Q: What was the mood like that night...

Baker: We were very concerned about what Israeli intervention in the war might mean to our effort to keep the coalition together, there's no doubt about that. And we exerted significant efforts to convince the Israelis that their best interests lay in not retaliating and we were successful. And I think everyone in the coalition, including the Arab members of the coalition appreciated the restraint that Israel had showed 'cos it was a first time really in her history I think that she had not retaliated when attacked.

Q: Moshe Arens in February came and visited the Oval Office for what by all accounts was a rather unpleasant meeting. He said the Patriots weren't working, he said you guys weren't getting it together. Can you recall that meeting at all?

Baker: I have a vague recollection of that meeting with Arens. Well Arens was just really of the view that I think he felt that his Prime Minister had made the wrong decision in not retaliating. But he was the Defence Minister and his political base required that he argued for retaliation and he was making the case as I think a Defence Minister probably should. But the Prime Minister was the person who made the decision and I think it was the right decision and the coalition--including the Arab countries--felt it was the right decision.