General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the Army, said privately: "I have spent a good deal of time in the Balkans to make sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the cell next to him in The Hague." -----
http://www.pretorianews.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=667&fArticleId=2504531 PRETORIA NEWS (SOUTH AFRICA) COMMENT How to legitimise a war in 10 days May 2, 2005 Britain's attorney-general expressed reservations about war on March 7 2003, but on March 17 advised that it would be legal, writes Paul Vallely, Colin Brown, Anne Penketh and Kim Se The document bore a single word heading. Above the lion and the unicorn crest of the British crown, it said simply: "Secret". It was not what the prime minister wanted to read. War on Iraq was imminent. The United States and Britain had set a deadline 10 days thence - March 17 - by which the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein must comply on six key demands. If he did not, then America would let slip the dogs of war, with Britain committed to fight at its side. But the 13-page paper in his hand gave Tony Blair six reasons why the war might be adjudged to be illegal. Worst of all, the briefing was signed attorney-general Peter Goldsmith, the government's own chief legal officer. It was March 7. Lord Goldsmith had just 10 days to change his mind. Blair took the counsel of two of his most trusted aides. The first was Lord Falconer, a junior Home Office minister with no brief in the area of international law, but who was a former flatmate of the prime minister and one of his oldest friends. The other was Baroness Morgan, Blair's director of political and government relations, again with no expertise in international law. They arranged a meeting with the attorney-general - at the end of which he gave very different advice. Some months earlier, on November 8 2002, the UN Security Council unanimously passed resolution 1441 giving Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations". It warned Saddam of "serious consequences" if he did not. The resolution was ambiguous about whether military action was legal without further resolutions; it had been carefully drafted to be vague on that point, in order to gain unanimous UN support. Two weeks later UN weapons inspectors arrived in Iraq, for the first time in four years, as 250 000 American and British troops moved to Iraq's borders. Saddam continued to play games, co-operating in part, but by no means fully, with the inspectors over the next three months. Back in London the attorney-general continued to express his unease. Towards the end of January 2003, he wrote a memo to the prime minister voicing his concerns. In mid-February, he was instructed to go to Washington to hold talks with senior American officials. He was still not entirely convinced. On March 1, Lord Goldsmith was asked by Downing Street to put down his views in writing. Saddam continued his brinkmanship. On March 1, Iraq began destroying its Al-Samoud 2 ballistic missiles - the largest act of disarmament since UN weapons inspectors returned to the country five months before. "Naturally, Saddam will play his game," Blair said publicly, "throwing out concessions to divide us, to try to weaken our will." Two days later Saddam announced he would submit a new report on VX gas and anthrax to the UN in an attempt to prove that Iraq had destroyed its entire stock of chemical and biological agents. Meanwhile US and British warplanes continued bombing Iraqi military installations in preparation for a ground invasion. March 7 was a fateful day. It was then that the UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the UN that Iraq had taken significant steps to disarm. There were still unanswered questions, he said, but more time was needed to complete his task - "not years, nor weeks, but months". That same day, Tony Blair was considering the attorney-general's memorandum. Now that document has been leaked we know that Lord Goldsmith, in addition to setting out six arguments for why the war might be considered illegal, gave no definitive opinion on the legality of an attack. "The safest legal course would be to secure the adoption of a further resolution to authorise the use of force," he said. Moreover, in light of the latest reports by the weapons inspectors, Lord Goldsmith told the prime minister: "You will need to consider carefully whether the evidence of non-co-operation and non-compliance by Iraq is sufficiently compelling to justify the conclusion that Iraq has failed to take its final opportunity." This March 7 document was never shown to a full cabinet meeting. When the Butler Inquiry asked the prime minister why usual practice had been broken in this way, Blair suggested he could not trust some members of his cabinet with such papers. On March 10 2003 the Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, who had been sent a copy of Lord Goldsmith's document, said he needed a more definitive declaration if he was to commit his forces. General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the Army, said privately: "I have spent a good deal of time in the Balkans to make sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the cell next to him in The Hague." It was on March 13 2003 that Lord Goldsmith was summoned to meet Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan. Exactly what was said in that meeting is not known but the attorney-general left with the view that the war would now be lawful under Resolution 1441 without any further UN Security Council authority. At the Azores war summit on March 16, the US, UK and Spain gave Saddam a 24-hour ultimatum for immediate Iraqi disarmament, or to face war. It was just 10 days since the attorney-general had issued his original 13-page advice. On March 17, Lord Goldsmith attended a meeting of the Cabinet. There the lawyer read out a brief statement, just 337 words long, saying that authority to use force against Iraq exists from the combined effects of UN Security Council resolutions. There were no questions. Blair swiftly moved the discussion on. Later that day the attorney-general read out the same statement to parliament. On March 18, Blair went to the House of Commons to set out the central justification for war to MPs. "The United Kingdom must uphold the authority of the United Nations as set out in resolution 1441 and many resolutions preceding it," he said, "and therefore should use all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction". The same day Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, resigned in protest over the legality of the war, saying it would be a "crime of aggression". Two days later the invasion of Iraq began. Technically the attorney-general did not change his advice, because he did not come to a firm conclusion on March 7. But the gap between his judgements of March 7 and March 17 constitutes a political chasm. >From all of which, what are we to conclude? There can be little doubt that had the attorney-general's full advice from March 7 been what he read out in parliament the outcome might have been very different. Wavering Labour MPs might well have voted the opposite way in the ensuing vote. As it was the prime minister was able to say, and has re-iterated ever since, that Lord Goldsmith's formal advice was "clear" that the war was legal. Foreign secretary Jack Straw has been able to maintain with a straight face that the official legal advice, as shown to the Cabinet on March 17, was "unequivocal". And Lord Goldsmith has felt able to stand before the House of Lords and insist that he was not "leaned on" to change his mind. Whether anyone believes them is quite another matter. - Independent Foreign Service Serbian News Network - SNN [email protected] http://www.antic.org/
