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Blair aide admits dossier mistake
LONDON, England -- UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief spokesman has admitted that a "mistake" was made in the production of a controversial dossier claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Speaking Wednesday, communications director Alastair Campbell told a committee investigating the case made by the British government for joining the Iraq war that "a mistake was made within the drafting process" of the second of two dossiers. One document, which has become known as the "dodgy dossier," was prepared in February this year and followed an earlier one released in September 2002. The second dossier was prepared by the Communications and Information Centre, a group chaired by Campbell and made up of numerous government officials. It was later discovered that much of the first dossier was plagiarized from a Californian student's PhD thesis, which had been posted on the Internet. "The mistake was to take part of the [thesis] article and put that into the draft that was being prepared without attribution," Campbell told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee. "We assumed this was ... government sourced material," he said. "It should not have happened the way it did." However, Campbell said the second document was a "briefing paper" and did not have an impact of the government's decision to take part in the U.S.-led war against Iraq. "The first dossier ... was a serious, thorough piece of work setting out why it was so vital to tackle Saddam and WMD (weapons of mass destruction). The second paper was not," he said. The appearance by Campbell, who normally shuns the limelight, comes a day after UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw admitted one dossier released by the British government in the run-up to the attack on Iraq was an "embarrassment." (Full story) The threat posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was the main reason given by the British government for going to war, but no firm evidence of chemical, biological or nuclear arms has been found. Blair has resisted calls for a full public inquiry into WMD and has refused to appear in front of the more limited parliamentary inquiry, some of which will take place behind closed doors.
The prime minister remains under pressure. An ICM opinion poll Wednesday suggested the lead of his ruling Labour Party over the opposition Conservatives had been cut to four percent. The committee, made up of MPs from a cross-section of parties, is examining, in particular, the government's statement before the war that Iraq was capable of launching WMD within 45 minutes of an order being issued -- a claim widely disputed among some MPs within and outside the government. "Of course it has been an embarrassment for the government," Straw told the committee. But he said allegations that the line about the 45-minute attack had been inserted for political purposes were "completely untrue." Former minister Robin Cook, who resigned his cabinet job in protest at the war, told the committee earlier this month the dossier released in September was "highly suggestible" and did not contain any evidence that Saddam had the capacity for WMD. And former UK International Development Secretary Clare Short, who resigned from the cabinet after the war, has also told the inquiry that Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush had made the decision to go to war last summer. Short said this was the reason why U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix was not allowed any more time to search for evidence in Iraq. The U.S. Congress is to begin hearings into the intelligence case for war this week, but Republicans have rejected calls for a more formal inquiry.
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