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Blair: Momentum growing for an inquiry into WMD evidence
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Blair's government cleared of "sexing up" dossier on Iraq's weapons.
Lord Hutton clears Blair's office of "sexing up" dossier on Iraq's weapons.
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LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Most Britons want an independent inquiry into the intelligence Prime Minister Tony Blair cited as the justification to launch a pre-emptive war on Iraq alongside the United States last year, new polls showed on Sunday.
The public sentiment mirrors pressure on U.S. President George W. Bush to launch a similar inquiry after a former chief weapons inspector refuted pre-war intelligence which asserted that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapons programme and posed an imminent threat.
Polls in The Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Times showed 61 percent and 54 percent of the British public respectively wanted an investigation into London's much-criticized evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
The figures give added momentum to calls from British opposition politicians and anti-war protesters for an inquiry into evidence flaunted by Blair's government as justification to send British troops to join in the U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
"There will be a mounting clamor, particularly given events in Washington over the past few days...that we really need a searching examination into the entire basis on which this government took us into that war," Charles Kennedy, leader of Britain's Liberal Democrats, told Sky television.
Opposition Conservative leader Michael Howard said he would this week table a parliamentary motion urging an inquiry.
"It is of utmost importance that we try to find out what went wrong with the intelligence," he told the Sunday Telegraph.
While sources in Washington suggested Bush may be leaning towards endorsing an intelligence inquiry, Blair's government is resisting, saying the intelligence he had was valid at the time.
Asked on Sunday whether there should be an inquiry, Constitutional Affairs minister Lord Falconer told Sky television: "No, I don't think there should. I think little would be achieved by constantly looking and re-looking at what the intelligence shows at a particular time."
Pre-war intelligence
Debate in Britain is focusing on pre-war intelligence after a tumultuous week for Blair that had threatened his very future in the seventh year of his rule. He survived a knife-edge parliamentary vote on his education policy and was exonerated by judge Lord Hutton of blame for an Iraq weapons expert's suicide.
One newspaper summed that up with a cartoon showing a gleeful Blair exclaiming "I'm off the hook!" as he freed himself from a small fish-hook marked "Hutton" -- unaware of a vast anchor-like hook holding him from behind marked "WMD."
Hutton's report into the death of scientist David Kelly, who slashed his wrist after being exposed as the source for a BBC report that Blair's officials "sexed up" intelligence over Iraq, was widely attacked at the weekend.
Critics said it was a "whitewash" which ignored government officials' role in leaking Kelly's name, side-stepped controversy over Blair's case for war, and was over-harsh on the BBC over a report by correspondent Andrew Gilligan.
Protesters burned a copy outside Blair's office on Saturday.
Gilligan, who quit on Friday following resignations by BBC chairman Gavyn Davies and director general Greg Dyke after Wednesday's Hutton report, remained defiant on Sunday.
"Most of my story was right. I did accuse the government of exaggeration and I still do," he wrote in the Sunday Times.
Dyke accused Blair's government -- and specifically his former spokesman Alastair Campbell -- of systematic bullying of the BBC during the Iraq war.
"What Alastair Campbell was clearly trying to do was intimidate the BBC so that we reported what he wanted us to report as opposed to what we wanted to report," he said.
But the BBC's acting director general Mark Byford -- anxious to draw a line under the row -- said it was important the BBC should stand by its apology and dismissed Gilligan's defence.
"Mostly right isn't good enough for the BBC," he said.
Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
