Print

Mail

wiki links

Blair says the accusations against him are `absurd'

After two weeks of hearings, the House of Commons' foreign affairs committee is to report today on whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair "sexed up" the case for Britain joining the US-led war on Iraq.

Political analysts expect the cross-party parliamentary panel to largely clear both the prime minister and his close aide Alastair Campbell, after a controversy that has been giving Downing Street a rough ride.

It began at the end of May when, as Blair was visiting British troops in Iraq, BBC radio quoted an unidentified intelligence source as saying a September dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction was flawed.

In particular, the source alleged that the 50-page dossier's claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in just 45 minutes was inserted by Downing Street over the reservations of intelligence chiefs.

The committee has also been looking into a second document on former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime, produced in February, that featured in part an uncredited paper by a post-graduate student in the US.

Its hearings ignited a bitter row on the side between Campbell, a former political journalist who is Blair's media strategist, and the BBC over the objectivity of its Iraq coverage.

Blair has ordered a separate inquiry from parliament's intelligence and security committee, which oversees Britain's intelligence community. It meets in camera, but Blair has promised that its findings will be made public.

In an interview Sunday with the Observer newspaper, Blair said it was "absurd" to think that he or any other prime minister would alter intelligence information for political ends.

"You could not make a more serious charge against a prime minister -- that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence evidence that I falsified," he said.

Of the BBC's reporting, he accused the broadcaster of having committed "an attack on my integrity," but he stopped short of demanding an apology.

Andrew Gilligan, defense reporter for BBC radio's flagship public-affairs program told the foreign affairs committee at the weekend that his source was "one of the senior British officials in charge of drawing up the dossier."

He quoted the source as saying the 45 minute claim was "real information, but it was included in the dossier against our wishes because it was not reliable. It was a single source and it was not reliable."

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who twice appeared before the committee, vigorously denied that either the September dossier or the February briefing paper was "sexed up" to beef up the case for war.

Of the September dossier, which was given wide publicity as Blair was preparing Britain for war, Straw said: "Some of what is in here has been proved by events. None of it has been disproved."
This story has been viewed 1534 times.