Blair: Job at stake in Iraq row |
http://www.sina.com.cn 2003/08/29 13:13 Shanghai Daily |
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday he would have had to resign if there had been any truth in a media report claiming that his government distorted information about Iraqi weapons. Blair said the British Broad-casting Corporation report that his office had exaggerated estimations of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was not true and that it questioned his credibility. "It was an extraordinary allegation to make and an extremely serious one," he told an inquiry into the apparent suicide of a government weapons expert, who was caught up in a political storm over the government's Iraq policy. "This was an absolutely fundamental charge ... this was an allegation that we had behaved in a way that, were it true ... would have warranted my resignation," he added. Blair, who spoke for about two hours, is only the second British prime minister to appear in public before a judicial inquiry. He ordered the inquiry into the death of David Kelly, 59. Blair said a contentious government dossier on Iraq's arsenal was based on intelligence sources and was not manipulated for political reasons. "At that stage (in September), the strategy was not to use the dossier as the immediate reason for going to conflict, but as the reason why we had to return to the issue of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction," he said. Looking calm, Blair told the inquiry that a claim in the dossier that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes came from British intelligence, and was not inserted at the insistence of his office. "I also knew it had to be a document that was owned by the Joint Intelligence Committee and its chairman John Scarlett. ... We could not produce this as evidence that came from anything other than an objective source," he said. Blair was giving testimony before an inquiry on why Kelly apparently committed suicide after being identified as the likely source of the BBC report that the government exaggerated the threat of Iraqi weapons to win support for military action. Blair has vigorously denied misleading lawmakers or the public in the run-up to war. The BBC report sparked a bitter dispute between the public broadcaster and the government, with the credibility of both at stake. Dozens of anti-war protesters jeered Blair as he arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London. Scores of people had lined up outside the building for a chance to hear Blair give evidence before the inquiry. Blair said in July, shortly after Kelly's death, that he did not authorize the scientist's identification by government officials. But he told the inquiry yesterday that he took responsibility for the decisions by officials that led to Kelly being identified publicly after the scientist told superiors at the Ministry of Defense he might be the source for the BBC story. |
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