Tony Blair urged Kuwait to buy British artillery in response to London’s support for the country during the Gulf War, newly released papers revealed. The Guardian British.
The papers show that Blair pressured the then Crown Prince of Kuwait, and its current emir, Sheikh Saad Al-Sabah, between 1998 and 1999, including by contacting him during a short stop on a return flight from South Africa.
Internal briefing notes from the time show that the UK government believed it “deserves the award of a major defense equipment contract in recognition of its defense of Kuwait” after Saddam Hussein’s invasion in 1990.
The minutes of the apparently hastily arranged Kuwait meeting in January 1999 reveal that Blair responded to State Department officials’ request to talk about the AS90 howitzer, amid fears that the contract for these weapons would go to the United States to purchase its M109 guns. , according to the British newspaper.
The newspaper states that a note from the private secretary, Philip Barton, to his colleague in the British Foreign Office. Tim Barrow, covering the meeting between Blair and the Kuwaiti crown prince at the time, says: “The prime minister praised the AS90, said it was an effective weapon, even though he knew the US had offered the M109, and he very much hoped that all the support he had will be remembered.” We brought it to Kuwait.
“The Crown Prince said the AS90 was priced too high, while the Prime Minister indicated that the guns would do the job adequately,” the memo reads.
Internal briefing notes from the day before the visit, contained in files released by the National Archives at Kew, show that Blair was told that the government had been “frankly disappointed” that it had “won very little Kuwaiti defense action since the end of the Gulf War,” adding that it was a “friend of loyal to Kuwait for many years.”
This meeting appears to have been the latest of many attempts to woo the Kuwaitis, which included a letter from Blair to the Crown Prince in the previous three months in which the British Prime Minister described the AS90 as “the best 155mm weapon in the world today,” noting its superiority. in specifications over its American counterpart.
“This request is very important to the UK and our industry at a difficult time,” Blair wrote. “We will eagerly await your decision.”
But these efforts did not seem to bear fruit, as Kuwait announced its intention to buy US artillery two months after Blair’s visit.