Britain’s defence minister on Thursday played down a spiralling row over pre-war information on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction after Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted he was in the dark about a key piece of intelligence.
In a vigorous defence of the government, Geoff Hoon insisted it mattered little that Blair had been unaware whether a claim Iraq could unleash chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes referred to long-range arms or so-called ”battlefield” weapons.
”This was not a great matter of public controversy at the time,” he said on BBC radio, referring to the run-up to the United States-led war to unseat Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
”I don’t believe that there was any misleading impression,” he told BBC radio.
Hoon was expected to face a further grilling on the issue later on Thursday from a House of Commons defence committee.
On Wednesday, Blair told the House of Commons that even immediately before British troops entered Iraq in March last year, he had not been clear about what sort of weapons Iraq was alleged to possess.
In contrast, Hoon told lawmakers later that he had known the 45-minute claim referred only to weapons delivered by artillery shells or mortars, rather than missiles.
The 45-minute charge formed a pivotal part of a September 2002 dossier compiled by the British government to persuade a sceptical nation of the need to go to war against Iraq.
Blair himself highlighted the issue in a foreword to the dossier, while not specifying what sort of weapons were involved.
However, the day after the dossier was published Britain’s media gave the impression — uncorrected by government — that targets as far away as Cyprus could face attack, with the country’s best-selling daily newspaper, The Sun, splashing with the headline: ”Brits 45 minutes from doom”.
Blair’s critics have reacted with disbelief to his admission that when Parliament held its main debate into whether to join the war, he still did not know that the 45-minute issue referred only to battlefield weapons.
”I have already indicated exactly when this came to my attention. It wasn’t before the debate on March 18 last year,” Blair said in response to a question.
However, former foreign secretary Robin Cook, who resigned from the government ahead of the war, said he had been made perfectly aware of the nature of the weapons covered in the dossier.
”I find it difficult to reconcile what I knew and what I am sure the prime minister knew at the time we had the vote in March,” Cook told Parliament.
The defence spokesperson for the main opposition Conservative Party, Michael Ancram, said he found it ”very hard to believe” that Hoon knew the truth but chose not to tell Blair.
”It beggars belief that on the eve of going to war the prime minister did not have the information that was available to Robin Cook,” he told BBC Radio on Thursday.
The somewhat bizarre row marks yet another blow for Blair’s government, under increasingly intense pressure to explain why Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, used to justify the war, have yet to be found.
On Tuesday, Blair announced that an investigation would into be held into any intelligence failures. — Sapa-AFP