Talking to the enemy

Tony Blair's former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell argues for 'channels of communication' between the government and groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda.

Jonathan Powell, former adviser to Tony Blair

ANDREW MARR: That was Tony Blair talking to my guest Jonathan Powell for a film that you've made about the peace process.

Did you know when you settled down with Adams and McGuiness that they were effectively IRA people?

JONATHAN POWELL: Well I'm not in a position to judge whether or not they're IRA members. But what I can say is that they were clearly leaders of the Republican movement.

And the reason we were talking to them was because they could deliver the IRA as well as Sinn Fein.

ANDREW MARR: Did you feel uneasy or any qualms about sitting down with them?

JONATHAN POWELL: Yes there was a moral question in your mind in talking to terrorists. My own family had had some experience. My father had been shot at by the IRA during the war.

My brother Charles had been on a death threat list for a long period of time. So I did feel quite personally about it to start with. And I was quite reserved to start with.

ANDREW MARR: And yet you ended up by inviting Adams and McGuiness to your wedding.

JONATHAN POWELL: I did. And David Trimble too. I felt that I'd spent so much time with these people over such a long period of time they were actually personal friends.

ANDREW MARR: The, there's been some comment that over all you and Tony Blair leaned too much, particularly in the early days, towards Sinn Fein and that the Americans who are often blamed for sort of funding them and so on were actually tougher with them.

JONATHAN POWELL: No I don't think the Americans were tougher with them, certainly not in the early days. Indeed Bill Clinton of course was responsible for giving a visa to Gerry Adams to give them a perspective as a political path.

And I think the criticism sometimes made of us was that we should have wielded a bigger stick in the early part of the negotiations.

David Trimble in particular is critical on that and says that there's no prospect of the IRA going back to violence after the Omagh bomb and we should have taken a greater risk and forced them harder to move on decommissioning.

ANDREW MARR: Do you think - the decommissioning argument which those of us following it remember very well went on and on and on and kept being on the brink of everything falling apart. In hindsight did you spend too much time on that issue?

JONATHAN POWELL: Well I wouldn't have started from there. I mean making decommissioning a precondition was a terrible mistake that happened before our time. And indeed happened without the unionists really wanting it to be the precondition for going into talks.

ANDREW MARR: Why was it a terrible mistake?

JONATHAN POWELL: Because you got lumbered with something that neither side can move back from. When you set a precondition for talks you're really stuck.

One side's not going to give in. You can't give in. And so you go round and round in a circle. It would have been far better if we'd just dealt with it in the negotiations rather than making it a precondition.

ANDREW MARR: And presumably even if more weapons had been decommissioned or destroyed earlier on, if people want weapons they can get them.

JONATHAN POWELL: Exactly. I always felt about this that it was a rather theoretical or symbolic issue. Because at any stage the IRA could have gone back and bought more weapons even if they had got rid of them.

So it was really the symbolism which was a problem on both sides.

For them, the IRA, a symbolism of surrender and on the other side the symbolism of making the other side back down.

And in a negotiation like that you don't want either side to surrender, you want both sides to come out feeling they've succeeded.

ANDREW MARR: So that was a mistake that you were lumbered with when you started. Do you think that in the early phase of these talks the government's position appeared at least to be a bit too green if I can put it that way?

JONATHAN POWELL: No I mean Tony Blair had been responsible for changing the Labour Party's position from a mildly green position when he came to be leader to being in a position of a facilitator.

We weren't supporting either side. What we were trying to do was to find something that both sides could accept, both sides could live with.

ANDREW MARR: And when it came to the sort of day to day - it said in the film that you were very very heavily involved, shuttling around. How intense was it? I mean how often were you there? How closely did you get to know these people?

JONATHAN POWELL: It's interesting. Going back through my diaries to write this book and going through all the government papers, it was on my agenda pretty much every other day.

And trips pretty much every other week. It was a large part of my life for ten years when I was trying to do quite a lot of other things as well.

ANDREW MARR: And how important was Bill Clinton in all of this?

JONATHAN POWELL: Bill Clinton was important. He as I said had granted Adams the visa and offered them the perspective of a way forward.

And during the Good Friday negotiations he was on the phone the whole time. He was really fantastic. Stayed up right through the night urging both sides to sign up for things. He played a big role.

ANDREW MARR: And Hilary?

JONATHAN POWELL: Hilary obviously alongside him has played a role too as Senator for New York.

ANDREW MARR: But not - I mean it's - astonishing claims from her campaign that without her it wouldn't have happened. That's nonsense isn't it?

JONATHAN POWELL: I haven't seen the claims. But I can say without the Clinton family it certainly wouldn't have been peace.

ANDREW MARR: You're being very diplomatic. When it came to the sort of latter stages of the process both the official unionists and the SDLP were smashed by what happened. Did you see that coming?

JONATHAN POWELL: Well we tried to begin� from the beginning to build from the centre, to try and build from the SDLP, the moderate nationalist party and the UUP, the moderate unionist party to see if we could build a way forward.

And the criticism that someone like Seamus Mallon would make of us is that we didn't try hard enough at that. We were talking to Sinn Fein too much. We left them out of it. But in the end you have to make an agreement with those who are at war.

So you do have to make an agreement that involves Sinn Fein and the republican movement. And I guess the paths had really been sold by the SDLP when John Hume started talking to Gerry Adams in the late eighties. He sort of sacrificed his party in the cause of peace at that stage.

ANDREW MARR: And did you know that - well you must have known. But how important was it that in fact Sinn Fein, IRA had been pretty well penetrated by British intelligence all the way through this? I mean you knew what they were going to do didn't you?

JONATHAN POWELL: Actually I think that was much exaggerated too. I think we were quite often caught completely unawares as of course the government was at the time of the Canary Wharf bomb. So I don't think that that was necessarily a key factor. I think what had happened was there'd been a generational change. Adams and McGuiness had reached an age and the other leadership members had reached an age where they were well past fighting age.

And now they could see another whole generation going into a cycle of war that wasn't going to resolve anything. Neither side could win. And once they realised that I think they were committed to trying to find a peaceful solution. But they had to carry other people with them, other people who were more committed to the military path.

ANDREW MARR: When I talked to Ian Paisley last week he said "Oh it was inevitable. That's how it was always going to end". Is that how it, was that how it felt?

JONATHAN POWELL: No. I think it's quite important that people understand that it wasn't inevitable. It was never inevitable. And it wasn't even inevitable right up until March two thousand and seven. It could all have collapsed at that very last moment when the DUP said they weren't prepared to go into government in March at all. It had to be later.

So right until the last moment it was on the brink and could have fallen over at any stage. And the reason that's important is that other disputes in the world from the Middle East, to Sri Lanka to ETA in Spain need to understand that these things are not inevitably going to fail just cos they've failed before. Nor will they inevitably succeed. It requires people to apply themselves and to keep on trying right up until the last minute.

ANDREW MARR: And it requires people to talk. You talked to the IRA in effect. Do you think that ultimately we will have to end up talking to the Taliban, possibly even Al Qaeda?

JONATHAN POWELL: I think it is enormously important to, to talk to your enemies and to have a channel of communication with your enemies. The British government was talking to the IRA in the nineteen seventies, the nineteen eighties and the nineteen nineties when it was fighting the IRA, when the IRA were fighting them. It had a channel of communication. There weren't always very useful things that could be said but there was always a way to communicate.

If that way to communicate had not existed it's very hard to see how in nineteen ninety three, nineteen ninety four we'd have got into the peace process. There had to be a way to get a message to them and for both sides to feel comfortable they were genuinely aiming for peace. And I think in the end you need, with any of these sort of groups, you need to have some sort of channel of communication, which to start with will not be particularly useful but in the end gives you the way of making peace.

ANDREW MARR: So do you think it's important that today's politicians and leaders and behind the scenes people have got channels to Hamas, Taliban and indeed Al Qaeda?

JONATHAN POWELL: I think yes. I think unless you believe that there is a purely military solution you can find to any of these disputes at some stage you're going to have to talk to the people you're fighting. That does not mean negotiating on their terms. Negotiating with the IRA in the seventies, eighties and nineties did not mean we stopped the military campaign.

It did not mean that we agreed to a united Ireland. And it doesn't mean in the case of Al Qaeda you'd agree to a Islamic caliphate in Spain and Portugal. It means that you can actually have a discussion with them. And when they come to have serious views you can get them a way of climbing off the peg they're caught on.

ANDREW MARR: This seems to have been greeted by what I can only describe as a harrumph from Downing Street, this idea.

JONATHAN POWELL: Well the Foreign Office naturally enough said that they wouldn't dream of talking to Al Qaeda. But you remember the British government said in the seventies, eighties and nineties when it was talking to the IRA that it would turn their stomach to talk to the IRA.

ANDREW MARR: So possibly people have got communication channels open that we don't know about even now.

JONATHAN POWELL: Who knows.

ANDREW MARR: You focused obviously on Ireland for your book and for that film. Was that because you feel that when history looks back two handed or one handed or however many hands history's got at that point, history points at Northern Ireland and says that was the achievement of Tony Blair and Jonathan Powell. That was the thing you'll be remembered for?

JONATHAN POWELL: In part because I thought it was a really important achievement of Tony's to have brought peace to Northern Ireland. And it really would not have happened without his skill, his resolution, his absolute determination to, to, to insist on it. He's often criticised for his messianic beliefs in other areas.

But in this case if he hadn't had this messianic belief that he would succeed, that he would achieve it, it really wouldn't have happened. So it's part because of that and part because the thing was finished. The chapter had closed.

And it was a lesson that other people wanted to learn from. When I go round the world talking to other governments with similar problems they're fascinated about how we resolved Northern Ireland and they want to learn from the steps we went through there. What I wouldn't want to do is write about things that are still continuing and going on and walk into disrupting those. I was trying to deal with something that was a closed chapter.

ANDREW MARR: Clearly, clearly a closed chapter. Was it true that Gordon Brown never said hello to you for ten years?

JONATHAN POWELL: Well these things are much exaggerated. And as I said in that same interview he did very graciously come up to me at the end and congratulate me on Northern Ireland and the success and peace there for which I was grateful.

ANDREW MARR: And you were there alongside all of this. I mean the rows were real. You heard them?

JONATHAN POWELL: Yes of course. As has often been described before, the relationships like that are like a very stormy marriage with long loving sessions and long, long stormy sessions in between them.

And that's what you expect of that sort of intense relationship that had gone on for many decades.

ANDREW MARR: How much was it a real problem in terms of getting the business of government done? Because at times you read this stuff and you think well how did they ever sort of focus on the, what they were supposed to be focusing on?

JONATHAN POWELL: Well I think looking back on it, and so with the advantage of retrospect, actually there's quite a lot to be said in the British system of government for having a certain constructive tension between the Treasury and number ten.

Government when it's being its best, for example with Lawson and Thatcher, has that sort of tension. You want to have some sort of other centre of power that is challenging it. Otherwise in the British system you can be sort of too unchallenged and the danger is always hubris.

ANDREW MARR: Yes. I wonder where that leaves us right now.

JONATHAN POWELL: Well I'm not a commentator. I promised myself. One of the things that used to annoy me most in number ten was people leaving government and ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JONATHAN POWELL: .. setting themselves up as commentators, usually knowing nothing about what they were talking about.

ANDREW MARR: What about Iraq? Because that's the other thing that everybody will focus on. Did you feel, again with hindsight that you and Tony Blair and the team generally put enough pressure on the Americans, particularly when it came to what was going to happen after an invasion?

JONATHAN POWELL: I think that the trouble Iraq was, we were kind of preparing for the wrong sort of aftermath. We made lots of preparations for humanitarian disaster, for the lack of water, you know for all that kind of thing.

And what we hadn't, in my view, really thought through was the long term nature of this. This, the parallel I always see is the Balkans, that when Milosevic took over and when Tito died it took a very, very long time for that problem to unwind. And we tried the approach of not intervening in Bosnia with disastrous consequences and a million deaths.

We then intervened in Kosovo successfully. But even now that problem is still unwinding itself bit by bit. And I think we probably hadn't thought through the magnitude of what we were taking on in Iraq. This is something that will take many decades to sort itself out.

ANDREW MARR: You wanted the Americans though to, to make more preparations than they did didn't you?

JONATHAN POWELL: I don't think we can claim to have the benefit now of what we have from hindsight. No I think we were, we were pushing them to be prepared, we were pushing our own side to be prepared.

But I don't think any of us had really thought through, as I say this much bigger question of what we were dealing with.

ANDREW MARR: Do you regret any part of that? I mean the, for instance the ferocious row with the BBC?

JONATHAN POWELL: Well that strikes me as a relatively minor issue. What I regret is the terrible suffering of many people on the street in Iraq from the terrorist bombs.

ANDREW MARR: Six hundred thousand dead afterwards and ..

JONATHAN POWELL: Well they're not dead from American or British soldiers. They're dead from terrorists blowing them up and killing them with ghastly car bombs. And I do regret that.

No one in their right mind could possibly welcome that situation.

ANDREW MARR: Would it have been possible to go into that war better prepared? I mean were there things that should have been done that weren't done? Again, hindsight very easy.

JONATHAN POWELL: Well as I say with hindsight you can say all sorts of things.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JONATHAN POWELL: Yes of course it would have been better to have gone in with more troops, to have been better prepared to hold the streets and all the rest of it.

But no one was urging us to do that at the time. No one actually had that, that insight at the time. It would have been rather more useful if they'd told us then.

ANDREW MARR: Right at the end of your time there was all the cash for peerages thing going on. And you had Yates of the Yard coming in and out in full view of the, and lots of leaks in the press. Did you feel badly treated by that process?

JONATHAN POWELL: It's extremely unpleasant to be subject to that sort of intensive scrutiny for a long period of time, particularly when it's conducted almost entirely in the pages of the newspaper.

And it did go on - most political storms pass after a week or two, but this one went on for over a year. And I do think as far as possible it would be best to keep the police out of politics.

ANDREW MARR: And do you think that the, putting the police in at that, at that point was a sort of, a political dodge which was unfair to the individuals?

JONATHAN POWELL: No I don't think it's a political dodge. I just think it was slightly unwise just on the basis of a complaint from the Scottish Nationalist Party to embark on a long sort of trail of that sort.

And if you look at what's happened to American politics from Whitewater onwards with endless special investigators, we really want to go down that path of American politics and have our politics tied up in that kind of knot from now on, then I think it's a mistake.

ANDREW MARR: I mentioned the joke about Gerry Adams and claiming political immunity at the beginning of the programme. Did you and Blair ever talk about going to clink over this or actually facing prosecution?

JONATHAN POWELL: We had plenty of, plenty of gallows humour of all sorts of that sort. And actually that call was not to, not to Tony, that call was to me. And it was the suggestion Adams made to me that we should go on a blanket that I thought was quite amusing.

ANDREW MARR: Well not on the blanket, but thank you very much indeed for coming in and talking to us. Your film about Northern Ireland I should say the Undercover Diplomat goes out on BBC Two on the seventh of April.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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