Prime Minister Tony Blair faced some tough questioning on Tuesday from deputies on whether the war on Iraq was justified, a day after a parliamentary report rapped the manner in which he took Britain into the conflict.
Blair was expected to face a sustained examination before the liaison committee — made up of the chairmen of all the House of Commons’ watchdog select committees — after 9am (0800 GMT).
The premier regularly testifies before the liaison committee — typically doing so in shirt-sleeves — to field detailed questions on government policy and topical issues.
With question marks hanging over the government’s case for war because of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the liaison committee was thought likely to query the quality of the intelligence which led Blair to claim that Saddam Hussein posed a real and immediate threat to British interests.
Deputies were also likely to ask why the reconstruction of Iraq in the aftermath of war and the return of power to local people have gone more slowly than anticipated.
Blair’s grilling comes just 24 hours after parliament’s foreign affairs committee produced a much-awaited report after investigating two dossiers published by the government in the run-up to war in March.
One included a headline-grabbing claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in 45 minutes.
The committee also probed a BBC report in late May quoting an intelligence source who claimed that the dossier published in September was ”sexed up” with the 45-minute claim despite doubts among intelligence chiefs.
”We conclude that the 45-minute claim did not warrant the prominence given to it in the dossier, because it was based on intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source,” the report said.
”We recommend that the government explain why the claim was given such prominence,” it added.
The BBC — which has come under unusually stiff pressure from Downing Street to either apologise or retract its report — said it felt ”vindicated” by the findings.
Iain Duncan Smith, leader of the opposition Conservative party, and Charles Kennedy, who heads the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats, have both demanded a judicial inquiry into the case for war.
They said that the foreign affairs committee was denied access to the witnesses and documents it needed to come to a conclusion.
Blair, who was US President George Bush’s closest ally on Iraq, did not take part in the foreign affairs committee’s hearings.
But he has ordered a separate inquiry by the British parliament’s intelligence and security committee. Though it usually meets behind closed doors, Blair has promised its findings will be released.
National newspapers on Tuesday portrayed the foreign affairs committee report as a setback for the prime minister, while a poll in The Times suggested a waning of support among Britons for the decision to have gone to war.
The Guardian, which was editorially anti-war, said the committee report laid bare how Blair and his team ”struggled” to make the case for war, ”because the case was not — and is still not — convincing.”
A poll in The Times, conducted last Friday through until Sunday, found that 45% felt military action in Iraq had been wrong — compared with 24% in April. Forty-seven percent felt it was right. – Sapa-AFP