Notes from late 1990s show UK government believed it was due contract in recognition of defence of Kuwait
Tony Blair urged Kuwait to buy the UK’s latest artillery as payback for supporting the country during the Gulf war, newly released papers reveal.
Blair lobbied Crown Prince Sheikh Sa’ad between 1998 and 1999, including calling in on him during a brief stopover on a flight home from South Africa.
Internal briefing notes from the time show the UK government believed it was “due the award of a significant defence equipment contract in recognition of its defence of Kuwait” after the invasion by Saddam Hussein in 1990.
Minutes of the hastily arranged Kuwait meeting in January 1999 reveal that Blair heeded Foreign Office officials’ request to talk up the AS90 howitzer, amid concerns that the arms contract would go to the US and its M109.
A restricted memo from the No 10 private secretary Philip Barton to his Foreign Office colleague Tim Barrow, covering the meeting between the prime minister and the crown prince, said: “The prime minister raised the AS90. It was an effective weapon, although he knew the US had offered the M109. He hoped very much that all the support we had given Kuwait would be remembered.
“The crown prince said that the price of the AS90 was very high. The prime minister pointed out that it would do the job properly. The defence minister said that they would take the state of relations with the UK into account.”
Internal briefing notes from the day before the visit, contained in files now released by the National Archives in Kew, show Blair was told that the government was “frankly disappointed” to have “won so little Kuwaiti defence business since end of Gulf war”, adding that it had been a “loyal friend to Kuwait over many years”.
Barton reported that Kuwait “would keep [the UK] in mind” before making a firm decision.
It was the latest in a number of attempts to woo the Kuwaitis, which included a letter from Blair to the crown prince three months earlier in which he described the AS90 as “the best 155mm gun in the world today”, stating its specification superiority to the US equivalent.
Blair wrote: “This order from Kuwait is very important to the UK and to our industry at a difficult time. We will await your decision eagerly.”
The efforts did not immediately reap rewards, however, as Kuwait announced its intention to buy US artillery two months after Blair’s visit.
