Opposition: Blair lied

2004-09-30 15:06

London - Britain's main opposition Conservative leader Michael Howard has for the first time directly accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of lying to the British people about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction in the run up to the Iraq conflict.

"I don't think that's the only thing they were lied to about ... but Iraq is the great catalyst for the loss of trust in the government," Howard said in an interview for the New Statesman magazine.

Asked to clarify whether he thought that Blair himself lied to the public, Howard said: "Yes."

Asked when Blair lied, Howard said: "Notably when he had intelligence, as is set out in full in the Butler report, which was hedged with qualifications, caveats, warnings, which he translated into certainty."

Iraq - a prickly issue

"That was the unambiguous evidence that he put to the country," he said.

Lord Robin Butler's report in July damned as unreliable most of the pre-war intelligence on WMDs but cleared Blair of deliberate distortion.

Since the war Howard has said his party would not have backed the government's decision to invade Iraq had it known that the intelligence on Iraq's weapons was so flawed.

Blair faces on Thursday a potentially serious rebuff from his own Labour Party over the Iraq war as delegates at the party's annual conference prepare to discuss motions calling for British troops to quit the country.

Any vote on the motions could embarrass Blair, who, with a general election expected some time in 2005, is desperate to talk about domestic affairs and not the prickly issue of Iraq.

Blair refused Tuesday to apologise for taking Britain into the Iraq war, as he rallied his governing Labour Party to unite and win a third straight term.

In a speech carefully crafted to reassert his authority over a party still divided over Iraq, Blair confessed that evidence Saddam had possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction had "turned out to be wrong".

- AFP