Lord Goldsmith changed his mind about the legality of the Iraq war and gave Tony Blair the 'green light' after secret talks with U.S government layers weeks before the invasion, it emerged yesterday [27/01/2010]. The former Attorney General conceded that guidance from Jack Straw, then Foreign Secretary, had also been crucial in persuading him to shift his advice to the Prime Minister. But he dismissed as 'complete and utter nonsense' the idea that he had been 'pinned up against a wall in a downing street showdown.
The Iraq inquiry heard that for almost the entire period in the build-up to the war, Lord Goldsmith, the Governments most senior lawyer, had shared the views of every legal expert in the Foreign Office that the conflict would be illegal. He even wrote to Downing Street in July 2002 insisting that Mr Blair did not have the authority to agree with U.S president George Bush that military action could be launched without a further United Nations resolution.
Lord Goldsmith told the enquiry that the verdict was not 'terribly welcome' to Mr Blair who will face the inquiry tomorrow. He warned Mr Straw in November 2002 that he should not assume it would be 'all right on the night' and he would authorise war. In draft advice to the Prime Minister as late a January 2003, the Attorney General warned that he sill believed a further UN resolution would be necessary to authorise the use of force. But he was encouraged to visit Washington the following month, where he met President Bush's national security advier Condoleezza Rice, Will Taft, a senior advisor at the State Department and other U.S. officials who insisted war was legal.
Lord Goldsmith told the inquiry that he had also been influenced by talks with Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the British Ambassador to the United Nations, and a detailed letter from Mr Straw. By February he decided that it would be 'reasonable' to argue that previous UN resolutions gave the conflict legal authority, but still insisted that it would be safer to get a second resolution. His position was toughened up further in the days before war was launched in March. Lord Goldsmith insisted that a request from the military and the civil service - who were concerned about their staff being prosecuted for taking part in an illegal conflict - for a yes or no answer had been the deciding factor.
"Our troops deserve more, our civil servants who might be on the line deserved more than my saying there was a reasonable case," he told the enquiry. "So therefore it was important for me to come down clearly on one side of the argument or another, which is what I proceeded to do." The Attorney General claimed that the potential consequences of him refusing to back the war - Mr Blair's resignation, or even the fall of the entire government - had not weighed on him. And Lord Goldsmith said that at the crucial Cabinet meeting giving the go-ahead for war, he had been cut off by 'someone' when he had started to present his case and told that ministers could read the summary for themselves. Most of the Cabinet knew nothing about his earlier draft advice, raising serious doubts about the legality of war. There was then no discussion by ministers about the legality of the conflict, he said.
Taken From The The Daily Mail 28/01/2010
Sir Jeremy, who was Britain's ambassador to the United Nations between 1998 and 2003, believed the war was legal under the terms of successive UN resolutions, but did not have 'democratic backing', he told the Iraq Inquiry. But the determination of the US to invade Iraq in March 2003 was 'much too strong' for Britain to influence, he said. Sir Jeremy told the inquiry panel: "I regarded our invasion of Iraq as legal but of questionable legitimacy, in that it didn't have the democratically observable backing of the great majority of member states or even, perhaps, of a majority of people inside the UK."
He favoured delaying the invasion until October 2003 to give weapons inspectors more time to establish whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "So there was a failure to establish legitimacy, although I think we successfully established legality in the Security Council for our actions in March 2003 in that we were never challenged in the Secuity Council or in the International Court of Justice for these actions."
Sir Jeremy regarded it as essential for the UN to pass a resolution in 2002 establishing the case for war, and threatened to resign if no resolution was passed. "There were those of us, including myself, who believed that a resolution was essential if UK participation in any military action was to be regarded as internationally legitimate, and who would have been most uncomfortable with a UK decision to proceed if no new resolution was possible," he said.
"I myself warned the Foreign Office in October that I might have to consider my own position if that was the way things went."
In the event, the Security Council approved resolution 1441 on November 8 2002, paving the way for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq. Britain and the US were then unable to get a second UN resolution directly authorising war after they argued that Saddam was not co-operating with the inspectors and was simply playing for time. The lack of a second resolution has led many critics of military action to argue that the invasion was illegal under international law - an allegation the British Government has always denied.
Sir Jeremy said the Bush administration's determination to invade Iraq killed off any chance of achieving a concensus for war with a second UN resolution. "It seemed to me that the option of invading Iraq in, say, October 2003 deserved much greater consideration," he said. "But the momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter. The Prime Minister's arguments for more time, as I observed them from New York, appeared to win two weeks or so of delay, but no more."
Full article taken from the Daily Telegraph 27/11/2009