Britain ‘failed to establish legitimacy’ of Iraq invasion

[ajpirzada]

By Alex Barker, Political Correspondent
Published: November 27 2009 13:23 | Last updated: November 27 2009 18:08
The US and UK launched a war to topple Saddam Hussein in spite of failing to “establish the legitimacy” of the invasion, according to Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations.

Sir Jeremy Greenstock on Friday told the Iraq inquiry that while there was sufficient “legal cover” for war to topple Saddam Hussein it was of “questionable legitimacy”.


Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former British ambassador to the United Nations, tell the Iraq inquiry 'If you do something internationally that the majority of UN member states think is wrong, illegitimate or politically unjustifiable, you are taking a risk in my view'.

“If you do something internationally that the majority of UN member states think is wrong, illegitimate or politically unjustifiable, you are taking a risk in my view,” he added.

The inquiry, in its fourth day of hearings, examined the UK’s diplomatic efforts at the UN in the run-up to war in 2003, which were led by Sir Jeremy.

The former UN ambassador revealed that in 2002 he privately threatened to resign if military action was taken against Iraq without securing “at least one” fresh UN resolution finding Iraq in material breach of its international obligations.

“If this was just going to be a Potemkin exercise of going through the UN I was not going to be part of it,” he told the inquiry. He added that this warning, conveyed to the Foreign Office permanent secretary, was a “stiffener for London”.

Sir Jeremy unsuccessful attempted to negotiate a second Security Council resolution, which was blocked by France and Russia among others, triggering an ongoing debate about the legality of the conflict.

Securing such an agreement was the “safest possible legal grounds” for military action, Sir Jeremy said. However he made clear that the UK’s private position was that military action was justifiable on the basis of previous resolutions.

Sir Jeremy complained that “gung-ho attitudes” in the US over the need for regime change were “unhelpful” to the UK’s objective of pushing for international action against Iraq on the basis of weapons of mass destruction.

But he argued that the effort Britain put in to securing this resolution in itself prevented “the collapse of the health of the international security” that would have resulted from unilateral US military action.

”We were trying to defend the United Nations from being eroded by successive non-compliance by a member state just as much as we were trying to deal with the threat posed by the Iraqi possession of dangerous weapons,” he said.

Sir Jeremy echoed the concerns over the tension between the diplomatic and military timetable expressed by Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s ambassador to the US, in earlier testimony.

Addressing the issue of whether weapons inspectors should have been given more time, Sir Jeremy told the inquiry: “It seemed to me that the option of invading Iraq in, say, October 2003 deserved much greater consideration. But the momentum for earlier action in the United States was much too strong for us to counter.”

By March 2003 – days before the outbreak of war – he “did not feel ... that I could represent within the security council that the inspectors had had enough time.” He argued a “smoking gun” was essential to winning round sceptics.

Had they been given the summer to continue their work, Sir Jeremy thought there was a chance that war may have been averted. But he still put the chances of war in the autumn of 2003 as “more than 50 per cent”.

In his written testimony, Sir Jeremy said the two most important facts in the “saga” at the UN were the “absence of irrefutable evidence” on WMD and “the determination of the United States to proceed with military action whatever the state of the evidence produced at the UN”.

FT.com / UK - Britain ?failed to establish legitimacy? of Iraq invasion

[ajpirzada]

“the determination of the United States to proceed with military action whatever the state of the evidence produced at the UN”.

though we already know it but very interestin to see it comin from former UK's UN embassy

[ajpirzada]

Reports cited Iraq weapons inactivity
By Alex Barker, Political Correspondent
Published: November 25 2009 22:12 | Last updated: November 25 2009 22:12

Intelligence agents reported that Iraq had “dismantled” its chemical weapons and was unable to disperse biological agents 10 days before the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, an inquiry heard on Wednesday.

Senior Foreign Office officials giving evidence to the inquiry into the Iraq war insisted the report was the first piece of “contradictory” evidence to emerge as Britain made the case for war.

But Sir William Ehrman, director of international security at the Foreign Office from 2000 to 2002, stressed that ministers had been repeatedly warned that intelligence on Iraq was “poor”, “sporadic” and “patchy”. Even so, Tony Blair told the Commons the evidence on Iraq’s illicit weapons activities was “extensive, detailed and authoritative”.

When asked about Mr Blair’s interpretation of intelligence analysis, Tim Dowse, who was head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office, said it was right to separate “advocacy” and “assessment”.

The inquiry heard that officials were confident sanctions would prevent Hussein from acquiring parts for nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.

In late 2002 fresh intelligence, which was later discounted, led Whitehall to “firm up” an assessment on the threat posed by Iraq that “had previously been carefully caveated”.

Mr Blair saw one of the few pieces of information to run against this view on March 19 2003, just a day before sending British troops into Iraq.

Sir William told the inquiry that in the “very final days before military action” he received intelligence suggesting that “chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and that Saddam hadn’t yet ordered their re-assembly and ... might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents”.

Sir Lawrence Freedman, a member of the five-person inquiry panel, said: “Did it make you wonder whether, at this late stage, more care and attention might be given, that maybe it wasn’t too late to stop the war?”

Sir William replied: “I don’t think it invalidated the point about what weapons he had. It was more about their use.”

Sir William earlier listed a series of reports that “flagged up” big gaps in intelligence on Iraq’s weapon of mass destruction programmes. Weeks before the publication of an official “dossier” on Iraq weapons, his report stated that “intelligence remains limited”.

When asked about Mr Blair’s claim that “massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories” had been found, Mr Dowse said: “I didn’t advise him to use those words.”

FT.com / UK / Politics & policy - Reports cited Iraq weapons inactivity

[ajpirzada]

US first made sure that Iraq cant repel their attack by making them disarm them. and then attacked.

similar is with Pakistan. If we ever disarm, our future will be the same.

[Mastankhan]

Hi,

It will be sooner rather than later that all the info about the invasion will come out and we will find out that it was a religious encounter of the worst kind.

[Selma Shirazi]

Its more than obvious but we're not ready to see what is right there before our own eyes. We're are living in the anti-Islam age, even I as a non muslim can see that but our leaders will never admit.