POLITICS-BRITAIN: Iraq Dossier Could Boomerang on Blair

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Sep 25 2002 (IPS) - The dossier on Iraq released by Prime Minister Tony Blair could boomerang on the British government in the face of considerable opposition to Blair from his own party and from the leaders of several other parties.

No one had expected Blair to produce a smoking gun, but the dossier contains little evidence and has failed to convince independent observers. Within two hours of the dossier being posted on the Internet, a team of British journalists in Baghdad was taken to several of the facilities named in the report. The media could not report on anything hidden, but they saw nothing suspicious at the suspect sites.

Iraqi television quoted a spokesman as saying that the government is preparing a “detailed and full” response to the dossier. The spokesman was quoted as saying: “Blair’s dossier is full of lies and the inspection team will be able in a short time to verify that such claims are baseless.”

If the Iraqi authorities can establish quickly that the specific allegations in the dossier are baseless, the government’s case for an attack on Iraq will in fact get weakened, analysts here say.

Fifty-six Labour Party MPs expressed their opposition to any attack on Iraq based on the dossier during a debate in the House of Commons Tuesday. The dossier was not formally put to the vote but Labour MP Tim Dalyell used a procedural technicality to register opposition to the dossier.

The formal opposition by 56 members during the emergency debate was only the fist sign of Labour revolt. Many more MPs, who did not vote against Blair, warned him that he could face a bigger rebellion if he were to contemplate backing the U.S. in an attack on Iraq outside of a United Nations mandate.

So far there have been more votes against Blair than speeches. But strong opposition came from Labour MP George Galloway. “The British people have seen and heard the President (George W. Bush) and they think they are estimating him just about right as not a man who we would want to be at the wheel of the car as we drive along the edge of a cliff with ourselves sitting in the back seat,” he said.

Galloway said: “I ask Labour Members how we ended up on George Bush’s side of an argument with Al Gore, the Democrats’ presidential candidate. How do my friends feel having to say that Al Gore is wrong and that George W. Bush is correct? My friends have to answer why they are on George W. Bush’s side of the argument and not on the side of (Chancellor) Gerhard Schroeder, the leader of the German Social Democrats, our sister party in the Socialist International.”

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, said: “In many ways a gung-ho campaign of regime change in Iraq, without the explicit sanction of the Security Council, would be just as foolish and just as damaging in its consequences as the west’s covert but extensive support for Saddam Hussein some 20 years ago. Of course it is possible that the Prime Minister and the American President are playing a game of brinkmanship – talking tough to ensure a peaceful solution. The trouble is that they could just topple over the edge, and take us all with them.”

Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, the third biggest party after Labour and the Conservatives warned against British support to any U.S. decision to attack Iraq. “Those of us who have never subscribed to British unilateralism, we are not about to sign up to American unilateralism either,” he said.

There were enough indications Wednesday that Blair had not made the case for an attack on Iraq. Commentators pointed out that the dossier was far too speculative. The dossier says that Iraq “is almost certainly” seeking uranium. Iraq “appears” to be trying to acquire a magnet production line.

The dossier says Iraq is looking for aluminium tubes used in the enrichment of uranium but “there is no definitive intelligence” that they are for such a programme. Iraq could produce nuclear weapons “if” it could get the material.

The dossier says it is “difficult to judge” whether the missiles it says Iraq is making could be available for use. It adds that everything cannot be told, and sharing of information is limited by the need to protect sources. But what little is offered, and the ready challenge to those claims from Iraq make the dossier a hollow reading.

Robert Fisk, perhaps the most widely respected British commentator on the Middle East wrote in The Independent that if the dossier’s claims are true, that means that UN sanctions have not worked. He concludes: “If these pages of trickery are based on “probably” and “if”, we have no business going to war. If they are all true, we murdered half a million Iraqi children. How’s that for a war crime?”