Miliband: Action against Saddam vital to UN's authority

The UN’s authority would have been “severely dented” if Britain and the US had not followed through threats to Saddam Hussein with military action, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband said today.

Mr Miliband told the Chilcot Inquiry he voted for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 because Saddam’s defiance of the UN posed a danger to global peace and security.

He admitted that the hugely controversial US-led war exposed “divisions” in the international community.

But he insisted the UN would have been damaged if the conflict had not gone ahead.

Mr Miliband told the inquiry: “The authority of the UN, I think, would have been severely dented if the hypothetical case that you are putting – that we had marched to the top of the hill of pressure and then walked down again without disarming Saddam – then I think that would have been really quite damaging for any of the multilateral aims that we have that need to be pursued through the UN.”