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The changes secured by No 10 diluted the criticism of Blair
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CAIRO,
July 18 (IslamOnline.net) – Downing Street was able to protect
British Prime Minister Tony Blair by securing “vital changes” to
the Butler report on Iraq weapons before its publication, according to
a leading British paper Sunday, July 18.
“Downing
Street secured vital changes to the Butler Report before its
publication, watering down an explicit criticism of Tony Blair and the
way he made the case for war in the House of Commons," The
Telegraph said quoting a "member of Lord Butler's
team.”
The
report concludes the findings of an inquiry, led by former top civil
servant Lord
Robin Butler, to look into the quality of British
intelligence on Iraqi alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
The
disagreement between the Prime Minister's Office and Lord Butler's
inquiry team centered on a passage in the report about Blair's
statement to MPs at the House of Commons in September 2002, the paper
said.
“The
original passage drew a much clearer contrast than the final version
of the Butler Report between the strong case for war made by Blair and
the weakness of the intelligence the Prime Minister received about
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
“The
changes secured by No 10 diluted the criticism of Blair and helped
Downing Street to mount its main defense - that the report showed the
Prime Minister was acting in good faith," The Telegraph
said.
Blair
had argued that Iraq posed an
immediate threat and that Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein had to be removed, but no such weapons have been found 15
months after Baghdad had fallen.
On
Wednesday, July 14, the inquiry blasted the British pre-war
intelligence as unreliable
and seriously flawed, concluding that Iraq most likely
possessed no useable weapons of mass destruction. However, the inquiry
absolved Blair and his government of deliberate wrongdoing.
Distance
Himself
Quoting
a member of Lord Butler's five-member team, the paper said changes
were made at the behest of the Prime Minister's office. However, the
member also revealed that on the day he published his report, Lord
Butler was preparing to publicly distance himself from Blair if asked
at his press conference whether the Prime Minister should resign.
“It
was not his job to bring down the Government,” the inquiry member
told The Telegraph. “But he was not going to back
Blair either.”
“The
deliberately equivocal answer Lord Butler had prepared - which in the
end he did not have to deliver because the question was not asked -
would have stood in conspicuous contrast to his explicit request in
his report that John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence
Committee, should not have to step down from his new post as head of
MI6,” the paper said.
According
to the British paper, the attempts by the inquiry to make stronger
criticism of Blair in their report were hampered during an exchange of
views between Lord Butler and Downing Street that began some 10 days
before publication last Wednesday.
Under
the rules governing inquiries, any individual who has been criticized
or fears he may be criticized has the right to be shown sections of
the draft in advance with a view to giving a response.
An
inquiry member was quoted by the daily as saying: “This process was
gone through. One or two things were changed. These were accepted by
the committee.”
The
Telegraph said that in the
original draft, a passage on page 114 contained stronger criticism of
Blair's Commons statement of September 24, 2002. The report as
published stated, in one of very few direct references to Blair's
conduct: “The language in the dossier may have left with readers the
impression that there was fuller and firmer intelligence behind the
judgments than was the case: our view . . . is that judgments in the
dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the
intelligence available.
“The
Prime Minister's description, in his statement to the House of Commons
on the day of publication of the dossier, of the picture painted by
the intelligence services in the dossier as 'extensive, detailed and
authoritative', may have reinforced this impression.”
In
the original draft this last sentence was much stronger, according to
the paper, expressing the opinion that Blair personally masterminded
the misleading impression left by the dossier. The passage is
important because Downing Street maintained last week that the report
at no point questions Blair's “good faith.”
According
to a member of the inquiry, however, the Prime Minister should not be
regarded as in the clear. “The whole thing points straight to the
man in charge . . . absolutely to where responsibility belongs, which
is the Prime Minister, which is what we could not say.”
The
disclosures will put further pressure on Blair following the
revelation that the earlier Hutton inquiry was not told about the
withdrawal of key intelligence which formed the basis
for claims made by the dossier, the paper said.
Downing
Street admitted that MI6 withdrew some elements of the intelligence
supporting the Government's case for war because it was unreliable,
but decided not to tell the Hutton inquiry.
'Unlawful'
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On the day he published his report, Butler was preparing publicly to distance himself from Blair
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In
a separately related development, The Independent Sunday
said that Blair was warned before the Iraq war by the Attorney
General, Lord Goldsmith, that a UN court could rule Britain's invasion
unlawful.
The
warning was in Lord Goldsmith's so far undisclosed legal opinion from
7 March last year, less than two weeks before the conflict began, the
paper said.
Fearing
that the International Court of Justice could rule it was illegal to
go to war without the express authority of the UN Security Council,
the Attorney General put senior barristers and international legal
experts on standby to help to prepare the Government's defense if
needed, legal sources told the paper.
On
Saturday, February 29, The Observer reported that Goldsmith was
forced
hastily to redraft his legal advice to Blair to give an
"unequivocal" assurance to the armed forces that the
conflict would be legal.
The
daily revealed that Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq
amid fears that they could be tried in the future for engaging in an
illegal war.
“Goldsmith
wrote to Blair at the end of January [2003] voicing concerns that the
war might be illegal without a second resolution from the United
Nations,” the paper said.
Three
days before the Iraq invasion began, Goldsmith stated that resolution
1441 authorized the use of force because it revived earlier UN
resolutions passed after the 1991 ceasefire.
Click
here
to read The Independent report.
