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To: Oeconomicus who wrote (158101)	6/24/2003 8:29:34 PM
From: GST	Respond to of 164684

UK's Straw Admits Iraq Dossier Was Embarrassing Tue Jun 24,11:57 AM ET By Katherine Baldwin LONDON (Reuters) - Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday that a dossier on Iraq (news - web sites)'s weapons, partly plagiarized from a student thesis, had proved an embarrassment to the British government and should never have been published. Straw apologized to the author of the thesis, an Iraqi, and said a "very substantial error" was made with its compilation. But during a grilling by a parliamentary committee, he rubbished claims that the government had "sexed up" evidence of Iraq's banned weapons and denied that the prime minister had misled the country. "This episode has been of very great embarrassment to the government," Straw told the committee in reference to what has been dubbed the "dodgy dossier," published in February. The row over Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction has severely damaged Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s credibility, wiping out the "Baghdad bounce" he enjoyed in the polls after the war. A Guardian/ICM poll last Thursday showed Blair's overall popularity dropped in the past month and his ruling Labour Party's lead over the opposition Conservatives has plunged to its lowest level in 2-1/2 years. Another poll has shown that 34 percent of the public is less likely to trust Blair on other issues due to the weapons row. The House of Commons' (lower house) Foreign Affairs Committee is investigating the use of evidence in the run-up to war -- coinciding with similar hearings in the United States. Straw said the "dodgy dossier" had given ammunition to war critics who accuse the government of peddling lies, adding: "It would have been better not to have published it." The dossier was compiled by Blair's communications supremo, Alastair Campbell, and was not approved by intelligence staff. Campbell will be grilled by the committee on Wednesday. Campbell is also at the center of a row over another dossier published last September that claimed Iraq's weapons could be deployed within 45 minutes of an order to do so. An unidentified intelligence source told the BBC that Campbell had insisted on the insertion of the 45-minute claim to add a touch of drama. "There was never any request for the so-called 'sexing up' of either dossier," Straw told the committee. story.news.yahoo.com