New charge undermines Blair claims on Iraq war
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=615232
By Raymond Whitaker and Severin Carrell
27 February 2005
Fresh evidence has come to light suggesting that Tony Blair committed
himself to war in Iraq nearly a year before the American and British
assault in March 2003.
The news will heighten the pressure on the Prime Minister to reveal how
Britain was drawn into the conflict, in a week when a leading QC has
called into question the legal advice on which the Government went to
war. Such anxiety is felt in official circles that Special Branch
detectives had questioned MPs over leaks, it emerged this weekend.
Downing Street has consistently refused to disclose the date on which Mr
Blair promised George Bush that Britain would join the US in an invasion
of Iraq. But evidence obtained by the IoS suggests that it was as early
as April 2002, when the Prime Minister met President Bush at his ranch
in Crawford, Texas.
A ruling by the Parliamentary Ombudsman, seen by the IoS, says the
Government sought advice about the legality of a possible invasion of
Iraq in the spring of 2002 as the result of "statements made in a
particular press release".
The press release is understood to have been in the name of the Foreign
Secretary, Jack Straw, who condemned Israel for failing to comply fully
with United Nations resolutions calling for it to withdraw after an
armed incursion into Palestinian areas. As well as demanding that Israel
"respect international law", the press release quoted Britain's then
ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who said the "political and
moral authority of the UN is not to be cast aside lightly".
The date of the release was 9 April 2002, the day after Mr Blair
completed his two-day summit with Mr Bush in Texas. The implication is
that immediately after the Downing Street official spokesman had denied
that the meeting was a "council of war", the Government was
investigating the legality of such a war.
The issue is now being raised by the Liberal Democrats, who are
concerned about the sudden urgency of ministers' inquiries immediately
after the summit with President Bush. "To be asserting the authority of
the UN when there were discussions about possibly breaking the UN
Charter is double standards at the very least," said their foreign
affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell. "It underlines the need to know
precisely when this request [for legal advice] was made."
Such an early commitment to war in Iraq by Mr Blair, who insisted well
into the following year that British military options remained open,
would reinforce speculation arising from a book published last week by
Philippe Sands QC, a leading international lawyer. It repeats
allegations that the Attorney General was "leaned on" to change his
legal advice when the war was imminent.
It also emerged this weekend that Special Branch police questioned
opposition parties in December about leaked documents on the war. The
move to crack down on leaks is thought to be an attempt to prevent the
full text of the Attorney General's advice from emerging, as well as
further documents relating to the period nearly a year earlier, when
Britain and the US were discussing "regime change" in Iraq.
Special Branch detectives interviewed senior staff in the office of
Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, and Adam Price, the Welsh
nationalist MP, in an investigation ordered by the Cabinet Office into
the leaking of highly confidential Foreign Office papers on the war in Iraq.
Mr Price, who has led efforts to impeach the Prime Minister for
allegedly lying to Parliament over the war, said he had refused to
answer the police questions, believing the approach raised significant
constitutional issues about Parliament's independence.
The Plaid Cymru MP said he was told by the police the leak had caused
"seething anger at the highest levels".
--
Jez
'Realism is seductive because once you have accepted the reasonable
notion that you should base your actions on reality, you are too often
led to accept, without much questioning, someone else's version of what
that reality is. It is a crucial act of independent thinking to be
skeptical of someone else's description of reality.'-
Howard Zinn
NFS Underground2, Americas Army And MOH-PA
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