The Hindu Business Line : Tangled skein

A FIRST class political brouhaha is brewing in Britain over the possibility that the invasion of Iraq — publicly assailed at the time as a "crime of aggression" by a legal adviser of the UK Foreign Office — might lead to those in the Government and the Armed Forces (who became party to it under painful arm twisting by the US) being deemed under international law to be accomplices in waging an illegal war and committing crimes against humanity.

The predictable situation has arisen over the publication in The Guardian on February 23 of the behind-the-scenes fudging of the advice of March 7, 2003 tendered by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, that any decision to attack Iraq would be held to be in breach of international law, and a fresh and explicit resolution of the Security Council was required to sanction the use of force. At the time this advice was considered by the Cabinet, even the Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, had expressed his serious reservations against the invasion. The head of the Army, Sir Mike Jackson, too was none-too-happy about "ending up in the cell next to (Milosevic) in the Hague"!

However, since the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, had already presumably pledged Britain's support to the US, come what might, the Attorney-General was relentlessly subjected during the next 14 days to enormous pressure from both sides of the Atlantic to agree that the warning to Iraq of "serious consequences" contained in an existing resolution of the Security Council, could be construed to include going to war to enforce it.

Eventually, reminiscent of Yudhishtira's "ashwattaama vadhaha kunjaraha" in the Mahabharata War, poor Lord Goldsmith relented sufficiently to say that if the Government had "strong evidence" that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, it might constitute a justification for war.

The Prime Minister informed him that there was such evidence (which subsequently turned out to be mendacious) and the Attorney-General let him tell Parliament that on that premise, he was of the opinion that war was justified. In short, The Guardian has clearly brought out that Parliament's approval to the war was obtained by adopting dubious means. Oh, what tangled webs of deceit those in power weave to gain their sordid ends, unafraid of truth being out some day!

B.S. Raghavan

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