Interview with Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain

And of course you know the Iraqis took hostages as they retreated, they took hostages. Not only prisoners of war but hostages. They just gathered them and pulled them out of the house and took them back with them and some of those, I think something like between 500 and 600 of those are still not back at their homes in Kuwait. This is what you are dealing with, this is the sort of person you have to deal with firmly.

Q: Lady Thatcher, can you recall the moment when you heard that Saddam had invaded Kuwait.

Thatcher: Yes, very clearly because I had gone to speak at a conference at Aspen. President Bush was going to open it and I was going to close, so naturally I went out there to see what he would say. It was not long after I had arrived there that Charles Powell who was staying at an hotel in Aspen rang and said Saddam Hussein has gone into Kuwait, over the border into Kuwait. And immediately I said, "well please find out where our naval ships are, and also where our aircraft are and whether we can get any aircraft to go to the Gulf and whether we can divert the naval ships". You've got to take some action quickly, and you want first to know the facts.

Q: What was the first conversation that you had with the American President, George Bush, was it by telephone, was it personally, what happened?

Thatcher: No, I think that the contacts were done through Charles and I asked immediately, "is the President now coming to Aspen, tomorrow morning", and we had to wait to find that out, and then he was and so all of my thoughts were then on how one would conduct that meeting and the arguments one would put at that meeting.

So the following morning, I woke up early and started to sort out in my mind, the really big issues. I went out for a walk, always lovely in the mountains, and got things worked out in my mind, but it was perfectly clear, aggression must be stopped. That is the lesson of this century. And if an aggressor gets away with it, others will want to get away with it too, so he must be stopped, and turned back. You cannot gain from your aggression.

There was a secondary factor there. That part is the oil center of the world. Oil is vital to the economy of the world. If you didn't stop him, and didn't turn him back, he would have gone over the border to Saudi Arabia, over to Bahrain, to Dubai.......and right down the west side of the Gulf and in fact could have got access and control of 65% of the world's oil reserves, from which he could have blackmailed every nation. So there were two things, aggressors must be stopped and turned back, and he must not get control of this enormously powerful economic weapon.

Q: What was your first instinct about how he should be stopped? Did you first think that it would be purely an American action or an Anglo-American action, or a United Nations action?

Thatcher: No, my first instinct is what can we do? It's no good advising other people what they should do, unless you do the maximum that you can to have it stopped. And so by the following morning Charles told me that some of our ships were being diverted to go towards the Gulf and not to come straight home, and I knew how many Tornados and Jaguars we could in fact get to go to the Gulf and I knew also the friendly rulers in the Gulf who were accustomed to being host to our aircraft.

So we were all ready, and by that time Charles came into breakfast and also Anthony Ackland, who was Permanent Secretary, at that time, of the Foreign Office, so once again we worked through the arguments. I had no doubt about them.

When I then went to Ambassador Cato's main house where President Bush had come, George Bush just said to me, "now Margaret, what do you think?" straight away. And so I was able to say exactly what I have said to you, what I thought. And then while we were talking, a telephone message came through, I think from the ruler of the Yemen, and I said to him "President, you do know that the Yemen, being on the Security Council did not vote last night against Saddam Hussein", so we were already alert that there were some people who were in fact, not going to take the view which the President and I took, but were going to argue as indeed the next telephone calls that came in, from I think King Hussein, from Yemen. Let's try to get an Arab solution.

It was too urgent for that. The negotiations could have gone on and on and in the meantime, Saddam Hussein would have been control of the people of Kuwait. So we left it for a short time, -- we really weren't enamoured in any way with the possibility of an Arab solution, because we didn't think it really existed.

Q: Could you just recall the exact nature of that first conversation with George Bush. As you say, the President said to you "Margaret, what should we do?"

Thatcher: "Margaret, what is your view?" and so indeed I told him that aggressors must be stopped, not only stopped, but they must be thrown out. An aggressor cannot gain from his aggression. He must be thrown out and really, by that time in my mind, I thought we ought to throw him out so decisively that he could never think of doing it again.

But then don't forget I'd had all the experience of the Falklands and so I had no doubt what you had to do to deal with an aggressor, and my generation, as indeed, President Bush's, knew a terrible World War which had been caused because we didn't deal firmly enough with Hitler in the early stages, and of course the Japanese came into Pearl Harbor, so we knew the importance of stopping it quickly and then reversing it.

Q: But of course the, the President was receiving very conflicting advice wasn't he?

Thatcher: Oh yes, you often receive conflicting advice. That's why it is so vital to get your own ideas sorted out and the reasons for them. You don't have to accept advice which you think is unsound, but it is vital that you work out, what you think has to be done and the reasons for it. It's not enough to say well, I can put things across. You must know the reasons, and we were on absolutely firm ground. Dictators must be stopped. They must not be able to march into other peoples' territory, rule their lives, take away their whole mode of existence and just get away with it.

Q: How concerned that the President was receiving, not only conflicting advice, but very strong advice from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in America, General Colin Powell, who was saying "let's give sanctions the chance to work?"

Thatcher: We had sanctions because the United Nations resolution prescribed that we have a period of sanctions and you have to give them a chance to.... sanctions you know don't usually work.

On that day, we knew full well that if sanctions were to have any chance and you must stop the oil from flowing through to the enemy, very quickly, that meant getting on to the rulers of Saudi Arabia and the rulers of Turkey, because there was a very important pipeline from Iraq which went south, which went through Saudi Arabia and and the flow of oil through that pipeline had to be stopped, so ships couldn't get it from there.

Also, the President had to get on to the President of Turkey, who was splendid, he's absolutely firm. And we knew what it would cost him to stop that pipeline, because he gained a good deal of income from it, but he agreed to stop it. So we had a very very good reply to the effectiveness of the oil sanctions straight away. And that was due both to King Fahd, and also to I think, I can't remember whether he was President or Prime Minister Ozal, but Turkey was splendid.

Q: Why did Saddam Hussein believe that he would get away with invading Kuwait?

Thatcher: Well, he misjudged the people he was dealing with. I think he thought if he went little by little, he maybe could get away with it. And we had in fact, or the other Arab countries actually had been negotiating with Saddam Hussein, was in the middle of negotiations and he decided to go straight in. So it was no good saying negotiate, this man had broken his word. When he was actually negotiating, and he said I'm fed up of negotiating, I'm going to go in and take it.