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By Hasan Suroor
LONDON, MARCH 6. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has called for changes in international law to allow pre-emptive military action against countries suspected of human rights violations or seen as a threat to others. Echoing the controversial neo-conservative U.S. `doctrine' of pre-emption, Mr. Blair said that it was time to rewrite the centuries-old rule that barred interference in other countries' internal affairs except as "self-defence in response to aggression.'' He advocated a new international consensus that would permit countries to intervene even when they were not directly threatened themselves. Regimes, which brutalised their own people or posed a threat to the world should not be left to their own devices in the name of non-interference in other countries' affairs, he suggested. "Emphatically, I am not saying that every situation leads to military action. But, we surely have a duty and a right to prevent the threat (from such countries) materialising; and we surely have a responsibility to act when a nation's people are subjected to a regime such as Saddam's,'' he said in a combative defence of his decision to invade Iraq. Mr. Blair criticised the `paralysis' in the U.N. over Iraq and said it must be reformed radically so that its "Security Council represents 21st century reality'' and give it the "capability to act effectively as well as debate''. "...Our worry is that if that if the U.N. — because of a political disagreement in its Councils-is paralysed, then a threat we believe is real will go unchallenged,'' he said. His remarks in a speech in his parliamentary constituency of Sedgefield on Friday came as he came under renewed pressure to make public the attorney-general's full advice on the legality of the Iraq war after it emerged that the view at the highest level of the Government until shortly before the invasion was that it needed a specific U.N. mandate to authorise military intervention. The disclosure was made by the Cabinet Secretary, Andrew Turnbull, to a parliamentary committee. He was quoted as saying that until the eve of the war there was no "plan B'' except a fresh U.N. resolution authorising military action, and the view changed only when it became apparent that an agreement on the issue was unlikely. It was then that the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, was asked whether it was "still legal'' to go ahead with the invasion without a U.N. mandate. The full advice of Lord Goldsmith remains confidential, and only a summary has been published. In it he stated that Resolution 1441 was a sufficient basis for going to war, but according to a newspaper report, the same day as Lord Goldsmith gave his opinion, the Foreign Office sent a memo to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee saying that there was no `automaticity' in resolution 1441 to justify an invasion. Hans Blix, former chief of the U.N. weapons' inspectors, has fuelled the controversy by questioning Lord Goldsmith's advice and insisting that the war had been `illegal' in the absence of a U.N. mandate.
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