BRITAIN: The Iraq war cast its shadow over Prime Minister Tony Blair's election plans yesterday as critical Labour MPs and the opposition parties pressed for full disclosure of the attorney general's advice on its legality.
The latest row followed publication of the resignation letter of the former deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, Ms Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who quit her post two days before the war which she considered to be "a crime of aggression". Labour and opposition critics believe Ms Wilmshurst's letter - part censored when released under the Freedom of Information Act - shows that the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, twice changed his mind about the legality of the war in the fortnight before the military action commenced.
Lord Goldsmith's Conservative shadow Dominic Grieve said the government should publish "the entire paper trail" to allay suspicions that the attorney had either been "leant on" to change his views for party political reasons, or "deceived by the prime minister on the facts on which war might be justified".
Signalling his intention to make the war a major election issue, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said the government had "huge questions to answer" for its conduct before and after the conflict, and urged it to publish the attorney's full legal advice "and if necessary be damned". Both men were speaking after the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was forced to make a Commons statement in reply to an "urgent question" from Mr Grieve.
The latest distraction from the government's preferred "domestic" agenda in the build-up to the election came as a committee of MPs concluded that coalition forces failed to plan properly for Iraqi insurgency following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. This completed a triple-whammy for Labour's election planners just 24 hours after Mr Straw's announcement on Wednesday of a shake-up in the way intelligence is assessed in response to Lord Butler's report on intelligence failures in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
In his Commons statement, Mr Straw mounted a robust defence of Lord Goldsmith's advice to ministers on the legality of the war. Flatly rejecting suggestions that Ms Wilmshurst's letter showed the attorney had changed his mind, Mr Straw also called the Butler report to his aid: "Lord Butler came to his conclusion that the attorney general had given clear and categorical advice to the cabinet that in his judgment it was lawful under UN Resolution 1441 to use force without a further UN security council resolution."
In his most recent comments on a controversy which has dogged him since the war, Lord Goldsmith insisted that that view given on March 17th, 2003 represented "my own genuinely independent view" that the military action was lawful.
However, at the core of the current controversy is the claim in Ms Wilmshurst's full and uncensored letter obtained by Channel 4 News that just 10 days before Lord Goldsmith gave that verdict, he shared her view that military action would be illegal without a second, specific UN resolution.
In the section removed from Ms Wilmshurst's letter of March 18th, 2003, she said: "My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of SCR (UN security council resolution) 1441, and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March."
The suggestion is that the attorney first changed his position at that point, advising that military action could be open to legal challenge without a further UN resolution, and that it would be safer to obtain a new resolution, before finally concluding 10 days later that resolution 1441 provided sufficient cover.
Former leader of the Commons Robin Cook, who resigned in opposition to the war, said yesterday: "It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that what changed . . . was the discovery that we were not going to get the second resolution."