Thatcher: Well, I was very surprised. When you're dealing with a dictator, he has got not only to be defeated, well and truly, but he has got to be seen to be defeated.

Half measures never work, you've either got to do the job properly and show the world you're serious so they better not let it happen again. No half measures, just not on.

That would have left Kuwait, an enormous asset, completely in the hands of Saddam Hussein, and the people there, and they weren't being treated well as you know. And you recall some of the scenes on television, I remember them very vividly, there was Saddam Hussein, seeing some of our hostages whom he'd taken, hostages. And patting a charming young boy on the head and saying, we're keeping you here so that your country can't attack us.

I had already seen the Emir of Kuwait and some of his ministers, and made it quite clear that as far as I was concerned, we had to do the job properly and then I just went on television and said, I simply don't understand it. There's Saddam Hussein, a dictator, a man hiding behind the skirts of women and children, what sort of man is that?

Now, the generals in the Gulf, weren't even allowed to take a surrender. I have forgotten what they called it, was it a truce? Those people should have been seen to have been defeated, they should have surrendered their equipment and their armed forces. They knew full well, it had been well treated with us.

And I just didn't understand it, this is how we'd done it in the Falklands and then you have to look after all of the people who you have taken prisoner of war, of course you do, but it could have been done, many of them surrendered of course and came over, but there are a lot that totally got away, including the Republican Army.

So the people of Iraq never saw this dictator, humiliated and beaten.

Q: Why do you think that happened?

Thatcher: I don't know. I think that there were people who said look, Kuwait is free, we've done what we came to do. Let us free it, let us just stop now. What they didn't have any regard to was that the same thing can be done again, unless their army is destroyed.

Now sanctions admittedly are still on, but you couldn't bring down Saddam Hussein directly. You could only bring him down by humiliating him. It was not done. Not even the marvellous battle they'd fought, not even to take a surrender, and I think someone said 100 hours isn't that marvellous, we've done it all in 100 hours. Let's stop now, for the job had not been properly done.

Q: But do you think they did it because of resolution 678--that being ambiguous and unclear as to what the real war aims were.

Thatcher: If you are to stop an aggressor, you not only have to stop him on that occasion. You have to make certain that those who flouted every rule of decent behavior in fighting the war are brought before a tribunal and you also, in fact, have to see that the army surrenders everything they've got, and the people so they cannot do it again.

Q: What do you think the long term lessons, if any, of the Gulf crisis are?

Thatcher: Well, the long term lessons, I think are, complete the task to which you put your hand, because most people think that we should not in fact go in such very considerable numbers again. And also don't forget the aggressor would have learned a thing or two on how we would react.

Q: How do you think this crisis is finally going to be resolved? Do you think the people of Iraq will do it themselves or do you think somehow that the West has got to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

Thatcher: I don't see how the West can, we had the chance to to, to defeat him and make him surrender, I don't think we can. There is a balance of power there, certainly, between Iraq and Iran, very much so and now we are all watching very carefully, what happens to some of the weaponry that is coming out of the former Soviet Union, and obviously there has to be some equipment still kept down the Gulf in case we have to have a look at it again. Now, just look, there is the aggressor, Saddam Hussein, still in power. There is the President of the United States, no longer in power. There is the Prime Minister of Britain who did quite a lot to get things there, no longer in power. I wonder who won?

Q: Do you think we betrayed the Kurds?

Thatcher: I think the public opinion was very strong at the time and it was public opinion which virtually insisted that these people must in fact be guarded, and indeed they were, but the problem still isn't fully solved and indeed, in addition you have the Marsh Muslims who lived in the marshlands in the south of Iraq. Their rights haven't been properly regarded either.

You see so much of the problems we are dealing with now, comes from the end of World War I.

The German empire collapsed. The Austrio-Hungarian empire collapsed. The Turkish empire collapsed and the British empire went on and also the French empire did, but right down the heart of the whole of Europe were countries with strange names, which were put together artificially and so, Czechoslovakia came into existence and so because of the collapse of the Turkish empire, Palestine was put together and we the Britons were given a mandate to have regard to that.

And, because the Turkish empire again had collapsed, the pieces of Iraqi, administrative areas from the Turkish empire were put together, merely because they'd been administrative regions and they were put together and called Iraq. And all of the countries, the Balkans, many of them were put together and called Yugoslavia, and we're still suffering from the un-wisdom of some of those events, and we still haven't sorted it all out.