The Hindu : Blair orders probe into intelligence

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 04, 2004

International

International

Blair orders probe into intelligence

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, FEB. 3. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, bowed to mounting pressure and on Tuesday announced an independent inquiry into intelligence claims about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before the war.

But within hours, there was a controversy over its terms of reference after the Government rejected the Opposition demand that the inquiry should also examine whether the intelligence was put to political use. The Government claimed that the issue had already been `comprehensively' dealt with by the Hutton inquiry which last week cleared it of the charge of "sexing up" intelligence to justify the invasion.

But the Liberal Democrats said they would not support the inquiry in protest.

The inquiry, to be conducted by a committee of cross-party senior MPs, will be headed by a former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler, regarded as an `establishment' man and a safe pair of hands for the Government.

It will have a limited remit — basically to determine why the intelligence, which prompted the invasion of Iraq, proved to be wrong with no weapons of mass destruction having been found so far.

Mr. Blair, who made the announcement while appearing before a committee of MPs, insisted that the decision to go to war was `right' and said whatever be the findings of the inquiry, he would "not accept" that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein was wrong. The inquiry, he said, was needed because it appeared that the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which had been searching the weapons, would take some time to produce its final report.

"I think it is right, as a result of what David Kay has said, and the fact that the Iraq Survey Group now probably would not report, in the very near term, its final report, that we have a look at the intelligence that we received and whether it was accurate or not," he said referring to the recent statement of Dr. Kay, former head of ISG, that intelligence agencies appeared to got it wrong about Iraq's WMDs.

Later in a statement in the Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said the inquiry would examine any discrepancies between the intelligence available to the Government before the war and the findings of ISG.

It would work in cooperation with the U.S. inquiry on the issue and with the ISG; and would give its report to the Prime Minister before the summer recess. The decision has been dubbed a `U-turn' by the Government which had until now consistently maintained that there was no need for an inquiry as the search for weapons was still on.

Observers pointed out that Mr. Blair had been forced to "fall in line" as a result of intense pressure on him following the U.S. Government's decision to investigate its own intelligence claims after Dr. Kay's remarks.

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