| Questions on blair intelligence { April 21 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,940353,00.htmlhttp://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,940353,00.html
Pressure on Blair over reliability of weapons reports
Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent Monday April 21, 2003 The Guardian
The Conservatives said yesterday that Tony Blair had a moral obligation to investigate whether the intelligence services had misled the government into believing Saddam Hussein was harbouring weapons of mass destruction, (WMD) the stated cause of the war in Iraq.
The defence minister Lewis Moonie rejected the call but conceded that it might take a long time to find any weapons.
Britain is now suggesting that an independent country authenticates the discovery of the weapons by British or American troops.
The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, is due to give a report to the UN security council tomorrow on whether he can continue in his job. He wants his team of inspectors to be allowed back into Iraq, but the US is likely to keep them out;British confidence in Mr Blix has also slipped. The EU is backing the return of the UN team.
Robin Cook, who quit the cabinet over the Iraq war, has also challenged the existence of weapons of mass destruction and was presumably privy to the intelligence service briefings. Saddam Hussein always insisted he rid himself of chemical weapons when the inspectors last left in 1991.
Mr Blair will discuss a future role for the UN and the future of the Middle East with the Spanish prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, on Wednesday when they meet in London.
The two men, the only EU leaders to send troops to Iraq, have not met since the Azores summit on the eve of the war. They are likely to discuss the inability of the Palestinian prime minister, Abu Mazen, to reach agreement with Yasser Arafat on the make-up of his cabinet. The impasse is holding up publication of the US-backed "road map" to peace in the Middle East.
Rejecting claims that the government was embarrassed by the failure to find WMD in Iraq, Mr Moonie said: "I have no doubt in my mind at all that Saddam possessed these weapons. They have been well hidden, but with considerable effort we will turn them up. There are potentially thousands of sites in which these weapons could have been hidden. Do not forget we have only been in Iraq for four weeks."
The shadow foreign minister Alan Duncan said: "There should be proof, and as soon as possible, that weapons of mass destruction do exist. A call for an inquiry is premature, but the international community will not trust America - and potentially us - in future opinions if the reason given for the war does not turn out to be valid".
Some Labour MPs want the parliamentary intelligence committee to be given the task of scrutinising the quality of the intelligence work given to the British government. Its reports are handed to Mr Blair, rather than to parliament.
Mr Blair also faced further difficulties with the international development secretary, Clare Short, after she voiced further criticism of the government's Iraq policy only to withdraw them.
In an initial statement to the Observer she said: "We should have moved on the Middle East road map first and exhausted all the possibilities of the Blix process to ensure war was the last resort and to keep the international community united." She also suggested she had to get the military up to speed on their obligations to provide humanitarian aid under the Geneva convention.
She later withdrew the statement in favour of something more mild. It is not clear if she had a hand in drafting the first statement.
With the Americans in charge on the ground, the only diplomatic leverage available to the anti-war camp is to refuse to lift the UN imposed sanctions until the UN is givien greater control over the future of the country.
The danger is that a stand-off over sanctions could reproduce the divisions that have rendered the UN an irrelevance in the past few weeks.
Leftwing Labour MPs also attacked suggestions that the US was planning to set up military bases in Iraq. The father of the house, Tam Dalyell, said: "The sky is black with the chickens of the Bush/Blair folly coming home to roost. This was foreseeable and foreseen, predictable and predicted by some of the dissenters."
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