British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing mounting pressure from across the House of Commons to hold an independent inquiry into the Iraq war after former international development secretary Clare Short levelled the incendiary allegation at Blair that he had lied to the Cabinet.
As an increasingly exasperated Blair once again swept aside calls for a public inquiry into the failure to uncover banned Iraqi weapons, Short accused Blair of bypassing the Cabinet to agree a "secret" pact with US President George W. Bush to go to war.
To compound the prime minister's difficulties -- as members of parliament (MPs) prepare to return to parliament today after the Whitsun recess -- former foreign secretary Robin Cook demanded an independent inquiry into what he called the "monumental blunder" by the British government.
His criticisms were echoed Sunday by the Conservative party who said they were giving "very serious consideration" to calls for an inquiry.
Michael Howard, the shadow chancellor, indicated to the BBC Sunday night that the Conservatives were considering abandoning their bipartisan approach to Iraq because of fears that the British government might have "doctored" last year's dossier on Iraq's banned weapons to strengthen the case for war.
The interventions by such senior figures from across the house gave heart to Labour MPs who are planning to ambush the prime minister today at his weekly House of Commons appearance and also during a subsequent statement on the G8 summit.
They are demanding an emergency House of Commons statement after an unnamed intelligence source told the BBC last week that the government had "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq's banned weapons.
Tam Dalyell, the father of the house who has a question to the prime minister on today's House of Commons order paper, is expected to step up the pressure by asking about Short's accusation that he was deceitful to the Cabinet on three occasions.
In her BBC interview, she accused Blair of:
-- Agreeing in "secret" with Bush at Camp David last September to go to war -- and then telling the Cabinet that he would try to act as a constraint on the US.
-- Misleading the Cabinet over Iraq's weapons capability -- by "spinning" the claim that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes.
"Where the spin came was the suggestion that it was all weaponized, ready to go, immediately dangerous, likely to get into the hands of al-Qaeda, and therefore things were very very urgent."
-- Falsely telling the Cabinet and the world that French President Jacques Chirac would veto a second UN Security Council resolution authorizing war.
The transcript of Chirac's interview, which she subsequently read, showed the prime minister's claim to be wrong.
Short, who was widely criticized after she failed to carry out a threat to resign on the eve of war, also accused the prime minister of riding roughshod over the conventions of Cabinet.
Warning that civil servants and troops were ready to disobey an order to go to war, Short said that the prime minister swung round the Whitehall machinery at the last moment when the attorney general declared that military action would be legal.
But she added, "I think, given the attorney's advice, it was legal. But I think the route we got there didn't honor the legality questions."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS