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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (176050)	10/5/2003 9:18:52 AM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576610

U.S. Ties Motivated Blair, Ex-Aide Says By MICHAEL McDONOUGH Associated Press Writer published 09:04 AM - OCTOBER 05, 2003 Eastern Time A former Cabinet minister said Sunday that he believed Prime Minister Tony Blair's main reason for going to war in Iraq was a desire for Britain to remain close to the U.S. administration. Former Culture Secretary Chris Smith, who was a leading opponent to the war in Blair's ruling Labor Party, said his belief was backed up by the diaries of another ex-minister, which claim the Cabinet was in turmoil over the prospect of military action. The diaries also allege that Blair believed Iraq had no "usable" weapons of mass destruction, a newspaper reported. Robin Cook, a former foreign secretary who quit the government to protest the war, wrote in his diaries that ministers expressed skepticism about the need for military intervention in Iraq a year before the conflict. Cook recorded Blair as replying: "We must steer close to America. If we don't, we will lose our influence to shape what they do." Smith, who was no longer a minister at the time of the meeting and wasn't present at the Cabinet discussion, said the newly published diary excerpts showed Blair was primarily concerned about staying close to the United States, which had adopted a tough stance on Iraq. "What this shows is that the prime minister had an absolutely overriding motive right the way through for one and a half years or so leading up to the war and it is that motive which took precedence," Smith told independent television station ITV. "Right the way through, that comes through as an absolutely primary thing that led to war," he said. "What I think happened is that everything else was subordinated to that and that is how we got ourselves into such a tangle." Blair's government made the threat of Iraqi weapons the heart of its case for military action, and the prime minister has since been on the defensive because coalition forces have not found such weapons. In excerpts from his diaries published in The Sunday Times newspaper, Cook says he believed Blair had acknowledged that Iraq had no "usable" weapons of mass destruction just two weeks before the conflict. He also says there was near mutiny in the Cabinet when it first discussed military action in Iraq _ a claim that suggests greater opposition to the plan than has been acknowledged by the government. Blair's office at Downing St. shrugged off Cook's claims. "The idea that the prime minister ever said that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction is absurd," a spokesman said on condition of anonymity. "His views have been consistent throughout, both publicly and privately, as his Cabinet colleagues know."