Blair Pressed: Was War Legal?
On the eve of invading Iraq, British generals were worried that the war was illegal, a newspaper reported — opening the latest controversy over the war to plague Prime Minister Tony Blair's government.
Two British Sunday newspapers reported that British Attorney General Goldsmith had firmed up his legal opinion after military chiefs, concerned that troops could be prosecuted for fighting an illegal war, sought clarification.
Meanwhile, Iraq's U.S.-picked leaders, who failed to meet a deadline for adopting an interim constitution, hope to come up with an agreement in the few days but won't sign it until the end of a Shiite religious holiday, a coalition official said.
The coalition official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no signing ceremony for the interim constitution would be held until after Ashoura, a 10-day festival commemorating the death of the Shiite saint Imam Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad. The feast ends Tuesday.
Hamid al-Kafaai, a spokesman for the Governing Council, said it would be a day or two before the constitution is unveiled.
"There are no differences, no divisions. There are different points of views and all these have been accommodated. We have a united stand now and the transitional administrative law will be announced soon," he said.
In other developments:
The Observer newspaper attributed its report to anonymous senior government sources, while the Independent on Sunday said it had learned of the change from sources connected to the court case of a former British intelligence agency worker, Katharine Gun.
Gun was accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act after she admitted leaking a document disclosing a U.S. appeal for British help in monitoring communications of members of the U.N. Security Council, when the two countries were seeking the council's backing for war.
Prosecutors dropped the case last week after Gun's lawyers asked to see the advice given by Goldsmith.
Goldsmith told the House of Lords the decision to drop the case was made solely on legal grounds and "free from any political interference."
Goldsmith issued advice publicly on March 17, 2003, that, based on three U.N. resolutions, the use of force against Iraq was legal. But his earlier private advice to the government has never been made public.
Blair's office has consistently rebuffed calls to make the advice public based on "the long-standing convention that advice to governments in office is not disclosed."
The prime minister's allies defended him Sunday.
"We have a fog of fabrication and allegation not backed up by any evidence at all to suggest that the Government did anything in any underhand way," House of Commons leader Peter Hain told ITV1's GMTV program.
"I think it is a deliberate effort to refocus from the most successful government and prime minister in living memory and to try to sidetrack everyone into what I think has become a very old story," he added.
His comments were backed up by fellow Labour Party lawmaker George Foulkes.
The government came under increased pressure to reveal it Saturday when environmental group Greenpeace demanded access to it to help in the legal defense of 14 of its activists, who are facing charges from an anti-war protest last year.
Blair's support for the war has triggered a series of crises for his government, leading to a bitter row with the BBC, the suicide of a government scientist and calls for him to resign.
Meanwhile, a controversy over spying at the United Nations deepened.
Last week, a former Cabinet official said Britain had spied on United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in the run up to war — surveillance that Annan's office said would have been illegal.
Former weapons inspection chiefs Hans Blix and Richard Butler subsequently revealed they had been kept under surveillance. It emerged Sunday that Britain has a special intelligence unit charged with spying at the United Nations.