Former UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix: "Iraq War was Illegal" by Anne Penketh & Andrew Grice ABC News / The independent / UK 10:31am 6th Mar, 2004   March 5, 2004    The former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal, dealing another devastating blow to Tony Blair.    Mr Blix, speaking to The Independent, said the Attorney General's legal advice to the Government on the eve of war, giving cover for military action by the US and Britain, had no lawful justification. He said it would have required a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force for the invasion of Iraq last March to have been legal.    His intervention goes to the heart of the current controversy over Lord Goldsmith's advice, and comes as the Prime Minister begins his fightback with a speech on Iraq today. An unrepentant Mr Blair will refuse to apologize for the war in Iraq, insisting the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein in power. He will point to the wider benefits of the Iraq conflict, citing Libya's decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction, but warn that the world cannot turn a blind eye to the continuing threat from WMD.    But, in an exclusive interview, Mr Blix said: "I don't buy the argument the war was legalized by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions." And it appeared yesterday that the Government shared that view until the eve of war, when it received the Lord Goldsmith's final advice.    Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, revealed that the Government had assumed, until the eve of war in Iraq, that it needed a specific UN mandate to authorize military action.    Mr Blix demolished the argument advanced by Lord Goldsmith three days before the war began, which stated that resolution 1441 authorized the use of force because it revived earlier UN resolutions passed after the 1991 ceasefire.    Mr Blix said that while it was possible to argue that Iraq had breached the ceasefire by violating UN resolutions adopted since 1991, the "ownership" of the resolutions rested with the entire 15-member Security Council and not with individual states. "It's the Security Council that is party to the ceasefire, not the UK and US individually, and therefore it is the council that has ownership of the ceasefire, in my interpretation."    He said to challenge that interpretation would set a dangerous precedent. "Any individual member could take a view - the Russians could take one view, the Chinese could take another, they could be at war with each other, theoretically," Mr Blix said.    The Attorney General's opinion has come under fresh scrutiny since the collapse of the trial against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun last week, prompting calls for his full advice to be made public.    Mr Blix, who is an international lawyer by training, said: "I would suspect there is a more skeptical view than those two A4 pages," in a reference to Clare Short's contemptuous description of the 358-word summary.    It emerged on Wednesday that a Foreign Office memo, sent to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on the same day that Lord Goldsmith's summary was published, made clear that there was no "automaticity" in resolution 1441 to justify war.    Asked whether, in his view, a second resolution authorizing force should have been adopted, Mr Blix replied: "Oh yes."    In the interview, ahead of the publication next week of his book Disarming Iraq: The search for weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blix dismissed the suggestion that Mr Blair should resign or apologize over the failure to find any WMD in Iraq.    But he suggested that the Prime Minister may have been fatally wounded by his loss of credibility, and that voters would deliver their verdict. "Some people say Bush and Blair should be put before a tribunal and I say that you have the punishment in the political field here," he said. "Their credibility has been affected by this: Bush too lost some credibility."    He repeated accusations the US and British governments "hyped" intelligence and lacked critical thinking. "They used exclamation marks instead of question marks."    "I have some understanding for that. Politicians have to simplify to explain, they also have to act in this world before they have 100 per cent evidence. But I think they went further."    "But I never said they had acted in bad faith," he added. "Perhaps it was worse that they acted out of good faith."    The threat allegedly posed by Saddam's WMD was the prime reason cited by the British government for going to war. But not a single item of banned weaponry has been found in the 11 months that have followed the declared end of hostilities.    Mr Blair will argue that similar decisive action will need to be taken in future to combat the threat of rogue states and terrorists obtaining WMD.    © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd    7 March , 2004    "Blair sought politically friendly legal opinion on Iraq: claim". (ABC News Online: Correspondents Report - Reporter: Kirsten Aiken)    HAMISH ROBERTSON: Well, President Bush may still enjoy substantial public support on a range of issues, despite concerns about the accuracy of American intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing increasing pressure to reveal the legal advice he used to commit the country to war in Iraq.    With growing speculation as to why Downing Street isn't prepared to publish the opinion, a Labour peer and lawyer says the Attorney-General shopped around for politically friendly advice just before hostilities began.    Baroness Helena Kennedy has made those claims public in her book Just Law: the Changing Face of Justice and Why It Matters To Us All, which was published last week. Baroness Kennedy described to our London reporter Kirsten Aiken what happened in the backrooms of Westminster in the months leading up to the Iraq conflict.    HELENA KENNEDY: In late January the general consensus was in Government and at highest levels that there would have to be a second resolution to make this lawful, and there was confidence that such a resolution would be achieved. But as the month of February got underway, it became more and more clear that that was not going to be straightforward, and it would be quite difficult to get that second resolution.    Now, in January, the Foreign Office had held a seminar inviting in eminent international lawyers really to have a debate so that, if you like, their wares were on the table so that they could see what people's opinions were, and so it became very clear who took the view that a second resolution was necessary, and who were saying, 'well, actually an argument could be made based on all resolutions that there was a basis for going to war even without a second resolution'.    KIRSTEN AIKEN: Are you saying that the Government essentially shopped for legal advice that suited its political objectives?    HELENA KENNEDY: There's nothing unusual about… people all the time will go to see lawyers to see what their legal advice is, and lawyers will often have a whole range of things that are possible, and allow the client to make the decision as to which of those avenues they want to pursue and whether they can do so with a legitimate argument.    What was interesting here was that the majority… I mean, the expression that was used to me was that the "preponderance of legal opinion" was that the war would be unlawful without a second resolution from the Security Council. And I was told when I asked in March why it was that in fact we'd moved away from that, was that when Washington was told that that was what our lawyers were saying, the response was, 'well, you shall have to find yourselves some different lawyers'.    And I'm sure it was said as a kind of throwaway thing, but it was the minority opinion that was then used to justify war.    KIRSTEN AIKEN: On that basis, it would seem that the Government will continue to resist releasing that advice?    HELENA KENNEDY: Well, I think that… there is no doubt that the source of the advice that you could look back to old resolutions was a very eminent international lawyer, Christopher Greenwood, a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics, who's often used by government, but it was very much the minority view.    And the sense that there is, is that a decision was made to go to war, and then law would put out, if you like, the service of that decision, rather than looking at law first and saying 'what would be necessary before going to war?' And so that's the difference.    And I think the concern by people like myself is that we are seeing globally, law pushed to one side – we've seen it in Guantanamo Bay, we've seen it in relation to civil liberties generally – that the law is actually being marginalised, and there's a levelling down, and that's what's so worrying, that in the face of, certainly frightening developments, like international terrorism of a different order, but instead of actually deciding… the civilised world deciding on high standards, that actually they're going for a lower common denominator.    KIRSTEN AIKEN: What does the ongoing speculation about the advice mean for any possible future conflicts that Britain might be involved in?    HELENA KENNEDY: This is the concern for me. I'm a Labour peer, and I'm supportive of my Government and I want to see a Labour Government continue in office.    But what I don't want to see are wars entered into without reference to international law, because international law is the glue which is necessary for our world, and for peace and security, and if we don't have international law and consensus as the basis for decision-making in conflict resolution, then I think that we're in for a shaky time, particularly when there's an administration in the United States that really is now promoting the idea of pre-emptive strikes and so on. I think that we've really got to try to reinforce the importance of law in the international community.    KIRSTEN AIKEN: Do you think that Britain's position is such it couldn't defend itself if forced to, say, in the International Criminal Court about its action in Iraq?    HELENA KENNEDY: I think it could defend itself because it's rather like the law on medical negligence, which any of your lawyers in Australia would tell you about, which is that as long as you have a respectable legal opinion to support your position and the position you took, then I think that you're home and dry.    And I think that what the opinion afforded to the Attorney-General from Professor Greenwood does for Britain is that it provides a defence to any of our military and to our Prime Minister against allegations that they themselves have committed crime.    But what it doesn't do is help in the arena of, if you like, the court of public opinion, where there is still alarm and despondency that we went to war on such fragile grounds.
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