LONDON: The UK supported a US plan to assassinate Osama bin Laden nine months before the 9/11 attacks, The Times reported on Friday.
Newly declassified documents show that the British government led by former Prime Minister Tony Blair favored the strategy to kill the Al-Qaeda leader in an airstrike.
At the time, Bin Laden was on the FBI’s most-wanted list of terrorists following a series of Al-Qaeda attacks, including the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left more than 200 people dead.
A suicide bombing masterminded by Bin Laden against the USS Cole, a US Navy destroyer, also killed 17 people.
John Sawers, Blair’s foreign affairs adviser, told him at the time: “We’re all in favor of whacking OBL. The Americans don’t yet have proof that he was responsible for the attack on the USS Cole.
“They won’t launch airstrikes until they have a smoking gun, and that may not be until after Jan. 20 (when George W. Bush would become president).”
British support for the killing of Bin Laden was mentioned to Blair in a pre-dinner briefing before the prime minister was set to meet with US President Bill Clinton, who was shortly replaced by Bush.
“We’re all in favour of whacking OBL but we need a bit of notice and a chance to influence the timing,” Sawers told Blair.
Since the attacks on its embassies, the US had been pursuing Bin Laden. A day before the 9/11 attacks, Clinton was recorded as saying the US had the opportunity to kill the Al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan, but the plan was avoided due to the risk of civilian deaths.
“I nearly got him,” Clinton said on the tape that was released in 2014. But he added that the risk was too high so “I didn’t do it.”
