FORMER BRITISH prime minister Tony Blair’s long-held declarations that the 2003 Iraqi invasion was legal under international law is expected to be strongly challenged this week by a number of former top foreign office officials just days before he appears to give evidence to the Iraq inquiry.
Mr Blair will appear before the inquiry headed by former top civil servant John Chilcot on Friday, an appointment which, with Thursday’s London conference on Afghanistan, is to be attended by world leaders. This has led to increased fears the UK could face a terrorist attack this week. The security services on Friday moved the terror threat to “severe”.
The foreign office’s former top lawyer Michael Wood, who was known to have doubts about the war’s legality, and another senior official, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, who quit in protest at the decision to go to war, will give evidence earlier in the week, followed by former attorney general Lord Goldsmith, who changed his mind about its legality just days before the invasion was launched.
The appearance of Mr Wood, who has not spoken publicly about his views up to now, and Ms Wilmhurst, was heavily trailed in British papers at the weekend, with all of them reporting sources “close” to both that they will clearly detail the doubts prevailing at the time in the foreign office – doubts which they are believed to claim were over-ruled by Mr Blair and Downing Street.
One senior lawyer close to the debate at the time told the Observer: “The advice that was given consistently in the foreign office [by Wood] was that war would be unlawful without a second resolution. The important thing is that foreign office advice was given consistently in one way, and then the attorney general, right at the end, gave advice to the contrary. That is what will come out.”
Mr Blair is understood to have studied “hundreds of files” in 3am briefing sessions preparing for his appearance before the inquiry, which has been much criticised.
However, in recent sessions, it has honed in on the debate that took place in the corridors of power over whether a second UN resolution was needed before the invasion could take place legally under international law.
Mr Blair’s appearance at the inquiry will take place under some of the heaviest security seen around Westminster in recent days. But war widow Samantha Roberts, whose husband Steve was killed in Iraq, has spoken for many relatives, when she said she believes the hearing will be “a waste of time” and that Mr Blair will be so well-briefed that he will “sail through unscathed”.
Mr Blair’s toughest interrogator at the inquiry is likely to be former ambassador Roderic Lyne, though senior British ministers, including justice secretary Jack Straw, have said increasingly pointedly during their appearances at the inquiry that he opposed invasion during his time as a foreign office official.
He has already criticised the way Mr Blair presented the government’s September 2002 dossier on the case for war to the House of Commons, saying that he found it difficult to understand how the then prime minister could have told MPs the evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was firm, when all of the intelligence was less than categorical.
The Chilcot inquiry has a wider brief than the earlier one that reported in 2004 under Lord Robin Butler, who was limited to studying the intelligence. The current inquiry is to examine “the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned”.