Ex-minister accuses Blair of lying over Iraq invasion

FORMER British cabinet minister Clare Short yesterday accused Tony Blair of lying over the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and said she believed the government’s chief lawyer at the time had misled the cabinet over its legality.

Short, a long-time Blair critic and then International Development Secretary, disputed evidence the former prime minster gave last week to an inquiry into the war, saying he had sidelined the cabinet and kept ministers in the dark.

Discussions were limited and there was a “block on communications”, said Short, who voted in favour of the 2003 invasion but quit the government shortly afterwards because Blair had “conned” her about the UN having a lead role.

Last Friday, Blair defended of his decision to go to war, saying Saddam Hussein had posed a threat to the world and had to be disarmed or removed.

He told the inquiry there had been “substantive discussion” with senior ministers in the cabinet.

But Short said she was excluded from talks and Blair had not wanted Iraq discussed in the cabinet because he was afraid of leaks to the media.

“There was secretiveness and deception on top of that,” she told the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s role in the war. “Normal communications were being closed down.”

She accused Blair of being “frantic” to support the US and said claims the French would have vetoed any second UN resolution authorising military action had been untrue. “In my view that was a lie, a deliberate lie,” she said.

She said current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor, was marginalised and Blair was obsessed with his legacy.

Brown himself will give evidence later and commentators warn the inquiry could damage the Labour Party, which is trailing in the polls, before an election due by June.

Short accused former Attorney General Peter Goldsmith of not telling the cabinet of his doubts about the legality of war, or that senior Foreign Office lawyers believed it would be illegal without a second UN resolution.

“I think he misled the cabinet, he certainly misled me,” Short said.

She told the inquiry she believed Goldsmith had been pressured by Blair, something he denies.

Short said she had seen intelligence which showed there was no imminent threat from Saddam.

“There was no reason why it had to be as quick as it was... It was all done on a wing and a prayer.

“We could have gone more slowly and carefully and not had a totally destabilised and angry Iraq into which came al-Qaeda which wasn’t there before and that would have been safer for the world.”

Short quit the Labour Party parliamentary group in 2006 to become an independent.