Sunday Times
March 27, 2005
By David Leppard and Richard Woods

One of Tony Blair's closest ministerial colleagues put "huge pressure" on Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, to declare that war in Iraq would be legal, a senior figure in Westminster has claimed.

The insider said that Lord Falconer, a friend of Blair and now lord chancellor, urged Goldsmith to change his original view that war would be illegal. Falconer, then a Home Office minister and formerly a lawyer, was allegedly dispatched by Blair to try to address Goldsmith's private concerns.

"There was huge pressure from Charlie Falconer," the insider said while describing relations between the two ministers in the weeks before war broke out in March 2003.

This weekend Dominic Grieve, the shadow attorney-general, said he would ask the government to disclose details of contacts between the two in the weeks before the war. "I shall be asking for the minutes of any meetings that took place, including meetings where Falconer was present," he said.

He pointed out that Goldsmith has admitted meeting Falconer and Baroness Morgan, Blair's political and parliamentary relations adviser, at Downing Street to discuss the advice a few days before the war started. In this period Goldsmith's opinion on the war hardened considerably.

"I'd certainly say Lord Falconer had a role in this. It is clear that the attorney-general carried out a major change of policy," said Grieve. "One possibility is that he was leant on. The other, which I think is more likely, is that he was given new information about weapons of mass destruction. I think he was hoodwinked, like parliament."

Grieve said that as a Home Office minister for criminal justice at the time, Falconer should not have been involved in any discussions with the government's most senior law officer about the war's legality.

"Falconer should have had nothing to do with this. He's Tony's crony," he added.

A spokeswoman for Goldsmith said the attorney-general had repeatedly said that the advice he had given was his own, genuinely held view and that he had not been influenced by Downing Street or by any minister, including Falconer. "He was not leant on in any way to give that view," she said.

Goldsmith set out the reasons why he thought going to war against Iraq would be legal without a second United Nations resolution in a parliamentary written answer, published on March 17, 2003. It ran to just 337 words.

That note was the culmination of a tortuous process during which Goldsmith, according to insiders, believed until the very end that war would be illegal.

In 2002 he was approached by the most senior Foreign Office lawyers, who had concluded that war without a specific UN resolution would be illegal. "(Goldsmith) told them to bugger off. He said he had been forbidden to give a view by No 10," said one source. Of 23 cabinet meetings in which Iraq was discussed in the six months before the invasion, Goldsmith attended just two.

At the same time, the sources claimed, Goldsmith was telling friends that he believed the war was illegal and feared he might lose his job because of his view.

"He was saying this war was not legal and he was going to have to resign. He was really upset about it," said an insider.

On February 11, 2003 Goldsmith met John Bellinger, a senior US legal adviser, at the White House. According to Philippe Sands, a professor of international law at University College London, Bellinger told one UK official: "We had trouble with your attorney, we got him there eventually." Bellinger later told Sands he did not recall making such a statement.

On March 7, 2003 Goldsmith sent a 13-page minute to Blair, advising that war without a specific UN resolution could be justified — but that it would be open to legal challenge.

That minute, which the government refuses to publish, contained "serious qualifications", according to one source familiar with the contents. "It is very significant," said the source.

Goldsmith's 13-page minute, according to a new book by Sands, warned that if his argument for war being legal "were to come before a court of law it might well be unsuccessful, so that the use of force against Iraq could be found to be illegal".

That statement has not been contradicted by the government. Yesterday Sands said: "I am entirely comfortable with the account I have given. It hasn't been challenged and I don't believe it can be".

Six days later Goldsmith met Falconer and Morgan. Four days after that, Goldsmith had removed all doubts and caveats from his advice. Three days later the invasion began.

That Goldsmith changed his advice was confirmed last week by a letter written by Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a deputy head of legal affairs at the Foreign Office, who resigned days before the invasion because she believed the war to be a "crime of aggression".

Her letter of resignation, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that, in Wilmshurst's opinion, the attorney-general originally thought the war was illegal and had belatedly changed his opinion.

She wrote: "My views accord with ... what the attorney-general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of March 7. (The view expressed in that letter has of course changed into what is now the official line.)" A spokeswoman for Falconer said he had nothing to add to Goldsmith's statement. Asked why he had discussed legal advice with the attorney-general when he was just a junior minister, she said: "It's not something he wants to debate."

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

Original link

 
_____
Nieuwe Oorlog 2005 | Ander Nieuws week 14