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International
law rules out war to achieve regime change
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LONDON,
October 7 (IslamOnline & New Agencies) - British Prime Minister Tony
Blair has been warned by his top legal advisers that any armed attack on
Iraq with the aim of ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would breach
international law.
Confidential
advice from Attorney-general Lord Goldsmith and Solicitor General
Harriet Harman sets out limited circumstances in which international law
could allow military action in support of existing U.N. Security Council
resolutions, and gives legal backing for action to enforce the fresh
resolution under negotiation at the U.N. But it rules out war to achieve
regime change, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Monday, October 7,
citing an article in the Financial Times.
Were
the British government to breach international law, it could find itself
before the International Court of Justice facing charges for breaching
the U.N. charter, the paper said.
The
legal warnings are the reason why Blair's government has been careful to
avoid any suggestion that its military threats are designed to force the
Iraqi President out. The British line has concentrated on the aim of
getting rid of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, while
Washington has repeatedly spoken of "regime change".
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| The
British government could find itself before the International
Court of Justice facing charges for breaching the U.N. charter |
During
an extraordinary debate on Iraq in the House of Commons last month,
Blair promised that Britain would "always act in accordance with
international law".
But
U.S. President George W. Bush has repeated his wish for regime change in
Baghdad and Blair is in an "impossible position" should
Washington attack Iraq unilaterally without U.N. approval, according to
a legal expert cited by the Financial Times.
Meanwhile,
casting more dubious shadows on the ulterior motives behind an expected
U.S.-led war on Iraq, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter
revealed there was a nefarious purpose from the inspection of the Iraqi
President’s palaces in the 1990s, Newsweek reported Monday.
Ritter,
40, a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Marines, said CIA agents,
and members of Britain's intelligence service MI6, were employed among
the weapons inspectors for intelligence-gathering purposes the last time
Saddam's palaces were searched.
Several
of the inspectors were gathering intelligence on where Saddam lived,
worked and probably took shelter in air raids – not with the aim of
eliminating the alleged weapons, but with the aim of eliminating the
President himself, Ritter said.
“Embedded
in the team was a British M.I.6 case officer, whose job was to recruit a
senior Iraqi official,” Ritter told Newsweek. “We were trying to use
the inspection team’s access to achieve this recruitment.
“Also
embedded in the team were CIA officers, whose job was to do a
structural-intelligence analysis of Saddam Hussein’s bunkers, and to
pinpoint the residences and offices of every senior Iraqi government
official.”
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| There
was a nefarious purpose from the inspection of the Iraqi
President’s palaces in the 1990s, Ritter says
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The
recruitment failed, but when the United States and Britain launched four
days of attacks in December 1998, “every residence and every office
occupied by senior Iraqi government officials was precisely targeted,”
Ritter said. “The only way that information was gathered was through
the process of inspector access to these facilities.”
Even
if there is no plot to terminate Saddam, inspection of his palaces is
– and is meant to be – a terminal humiliation: an assault on the
integrity, sovereignty and national security of the Iraqi state,
Newsweek said.
Ritter,
who has become increasingly critical of U.S. policies towards
12-year-sanction-hit Iraq, stressed that U.N. inspectors – who left
the country four years ago – had found no evidence that Iraq was
seeking to re-acquire capabilities in weapons of mass destruction.
