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WAR CHIEF REVEALS LEGAL CRISIS

Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, who led Britain's forces to war in Iraq last
year, has dramatically broken his silence about the legal crisis which
engulfed the Government on the eve of battle.

In an extraordinary interview which will reignite the controversy over the
run-up to the conflict, the former Chief of Defence Staff has revealed how
Britain went to the brink of a constitutional crisis after he demanded
'unequivocal... legal top cover' before agreeing to allow British troops to
fight.

His demand for a formal assurance that a war would be legal came on 10 March
2003, even as British forces massed on the Iraq border, and the advice
finally giving the all-clear came on 15 March, only five days before
fighting began.

Speaking to The Observer, Boyce, who was made a life peer after he retired
last May, refused to rule out the possibility that he might have resigned
over the issue, which he described as a 'crunch point'.

He said his concerns were 'transmitted' to the Attorney-General Lord
Goldsmith through the Prime Minister. This disclosure adds weight to a
suggestion that Tony Blair pressed Goldsmith to change the legal advice at
the last minute.

Boyce demanded an unambiguous, one-line note from the Attorney-General
saying the war was legal to ensure military chiefs and their soldiers would
not be 'put through the mill' at the International Criminal Court.

His comments will fuel pressure on Blair to release full details of how
Goldsmith came to his decision. The fact that it still took several days
during this critical period to give Boyce his assurance provides further
evidence of uncertainty in Government about the legality of the war.

It emerged last week that an earlier draft of the advice, produced around 7
March , prevaricated on whether an invasion of Iraq was legal without a
second United Nations resolution. The Attorney-General was then 'sitting on
the fence', said a senior Government legal source. He was forced to redraft
this advice as the countdown to war continued.

The Observer has discovered that Goldsmith flew to Washington in early
February for a crisis meeting with his American counterpart, John Ashcroft,
to discuss the war's legality. Their closed meeting on 10 February last year
left the British Minister still undecided as he flew home.

In his first interview since he retired, Boyce said: 'My views were clear
and made very formally both in Cabinet and in the view I had transmitted to
the Attorney-General through Number 10. I required a piece of paper saying
it was lawful... Now if that caused them to go back saying we need our
advice tightened up, then I don't know.'

Boyce said he fully supported the ousting of Saddam Hussein and did not
believe a second UN resolution was necessary. He still believed weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq might have been 'squirrelled away or destroyed at
the last moment'.

He said: 'The justification in my own mind was that I was convinced that
Saddam had chemical and biological weapons. I knew he used them in the past
and I believed he was capable of using them in the future. Given what
happened since 9/11 it was even more likely.'

Yet he was concerned that, without the legal cover from Goldsmith, military
personnel could be prosecuted for war crimes. Boyce hinted that if Goldsmith
had not provided him with this, he might have resigned, which would have
precipitated a major political and military crisis, with 60,000 British
troops stationed in Kuwait prepared for war.

Boyce admitted the 'personal' difficulty he would have faced if such
'unequivocal' reassurance had not been forthcoming: 'It would have to be for
people around me, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State [for Defence]
to know what sort of person I was and draw their own conclusion about what I
might have done if I didn't get what I wanted... I'm not prepared to say
what that was because this is extremely personal.'

Asked if this meant he might have resigned, he said: 'I really am not
prepared to say ... All I would say is that it was an important milestone.'

He said: 'I never said to anybody, not even to myself, "if I don't get this,
this is what I am going to do"... and I'll tell you why, because I was
reassured I would get what I asked for and I was prepared to take that at
face value. '

Legal approval was needed to protect everyone involved: 'It would have been
difficult for our people in the field, for the families of the troops and
our commanders if we had not had the reassurance that what they were about
to do was legal. Their doubts - if they had doubts - would have been
exacerbated by the fact that we were signatories to the ICC [International
Criminal Court].'

Last night, a senior Whitehall insider told The Observer that Ministers were
reluctant to disclose the Attorney-General's advice, fearing that this would
lead to 'a stream of lawsuits against the Government'.

Lawyers acting for Greenpeace activists on trial this week for alleged
criminal damage to tanks on their way to the Gulf are to call Boyce as a
witness. They claim his evidence could help prove their actions over a
potentially illegal war were justified.

Boyce told The Observer he did not want a lengthy legal paper from the
Attorney-General, but a simple yes or no if the proposed actions in Iraq
would be legal. He said: 'If I had been presented with a 30-page document
telling me the pros and cons and then a conclusion telling me it was lawful,
certainly it would be of interest but it wasn't the crunch point.

'I asked for unequivocal advice that what we were proposing to do was
lawful. Keeping it as simple as that did not allow equivocations, and what I
eventually got was what I required... something in writing that was very
short indeed. Two or three lines saying our proposed actions were lawful
under national and international law.'

Last night Downing Street denied Boyce had raised concerns about the timing
of the legal opinion before the beginning of the war. A Number 10 official
said Boyce had made a formal request for a legal opinion between 10 and 11
March and that he received the advice four days later, on 15 March.
Operations began on 20 March.

'He felt he got the advice in a timely fashion and he was perfectly content
with that,' the official said.

Antony Barnett and Martin Bright
Sunday March 7, 2004
The Observer

---

Malcolm Rifkind: It is now clear that the Prime Minister took us to war on a
false prospectus

While the guns are blazing and troops are fighting in a war, it is a
necessary and honourable principle that opposition parties give unequivocal
support to those who are risking their lives on behalf of their country. But
once the guns fall silent the Opposition has an equally strong duty to hold
the Government to account, expose its failures and inconsistencies, and
demand the fullest investigation of its errors. That is why Michael Howard
and the Shadow Cabinet have been obliged to speak on behalf of the public in
the growing demand for frankness from Tony Blair on the way in which he took
this country to war.

Of course most, though not all, Conservatives supported the war. Like the
public, they read the Government's intelligence dossier and assumed that
Blair knew what he was talking about when he described Saddam Hussein as "a
serious and current threat". But it is now clear that he took Britain into
war on a false prospectus and the Iraq war will, rightly, haunt Blair for
the rest of his premiership.

Over the next few months the focus of criticism for the Opposition should be
in three areas. The first must be the gross misuse of the intelligence
agencies to provide a character reference for the Prime Minister. There has
been much comment on the content of the "dodgy dossier" but this is
secondary to the decision to use the agencies and the Joint Intelligence
Committee to try to enhance the credibility of the Government's case for
war.

In his introduction to the September 2002 dossier, the Prime Minister
admitted that it was "unprecedented" for the Government to publish that kind
of document. I trust it will never happen again. I was in receipt of
top-secret documents for five years, both as Minister of Defence and as
Foreign Secretary. Neither I nor any previous Labour or Tory minister would
have dreamt of publishing material in the name of the Joint Intelligence
Committee.

That would have been to politicise the JIC on an issue that divided the
nation. It would have been like asking the Queen to call for war against
Iraq.

The second issue must be the 45-minute claim on which Blair only recently
made the extraordinary admission that he had been unaware that this applied
solely to battlefield weapons with a range of a few hundred yards. This is
not good enough. The claim was not buried away in the dossier. In his own
introduction, in a paragraph referring to Saddam's goal of regional
domination, Blair refers to the claim that some Iraqi WMD could be launched
in 45 minutes. If the Butler inquiry does not investigate how the Prime
Minister was as ignorant on such a vital matter as was, with more
justification, the rest of the nation, it will fail in its duty.

The third area where the Opposition and the country must demand action is on
the need for a Franks-style inquiry into the whole decision to go to war.
The case for such an inquiry is powerful. After the Falklands War such an
inquiry was set up although the nation was almost totally united and the war
had been an unqualified success. The Iraq war, in contrast, has bitterly
divided the country and its aftermath continues to involve massive loss of
life, mainly to Iraqis but also to coalition troops.

A decision to go to war is the most difficult but also the most serious
decision that any prime minister will ever take. When it is done without UN
endorsement, dividing the country and on an intelligence basis that is
subsequently found to be unjustified, to deny a full inquiry becomes
perverse.

It is also the best way of resolving the question of the Attorney General's
advice on the legality of the war. Legal opinions, whether to private
citizens or to governments, are usually private matters for good reasons. To
publish them does create an uncomfortable precedent. But we live in
uncomfortable times. If Blair concedes a full inquiry into the war, the
Attorney General's advice could be part of the evidence submitted and could
be kept confidential if need be. What the Government cannot do is refuse
both publication and a full inquiry.

Tony Blair's henchmen have taken to calling Michael Howard opportunist
because of his trenchant criticisms of both the Government's Iraq policy and
the way that the committee under Lord Butler seems likely to address its
responsibilities. Methinks it doth protest too much. Howard is doing just
what a leader of the opposition should be doing. He is reflecting the
public's concerns and holding the Government to account.

It is not just the Iraq war that will be seen as the fault line of this
government. It will be the way it politicised the intelligence agencies; the
45-minute shambles; and its refusal hold a comprehensive inquiry into its
actions. It's not exactly what we thought an ethical foreign policy would be
all about.

The Independent - 07 March 2004

Sir Malcolm Rifkind was Foreign Secretary in John Major's government and is
Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Kensington & Chelsea

---

GREENPEACE.ORG.UK STATEMENT ON IRAQ WHISTLE-BLOWER CASE:

Government faces further headache over legal case for Iraq war
Last edited: 28-02-2004

Whistle-blower case has 'huge implications' for Greenpeace protesters

Tony Blair faces further embarrassment in less than a fortnight, when
fourteen Greenpeace volunteers appear in court on charges relating to an
anti-war protest. Their case has taken on great significance since the
Crown
Prosection Service (CPS) claimed the case against Katherine Gun was
dropped
because they could not "disprove the defence of necessity" -- that is to
say, they could not counter the defence that her actions were justified to
save lives.

The so-called Marchwood Fourteen occupied tanks at the Southampton
military
port in February last year. Throughout their case the defendants - all
Greenpeace volunteers - have argued that their actions were necessary to
prevent loss of life. With the CPS now saying they could not have
disproved
such a defence in the Gun case, Greenpeace lawyers wonder how the CPS will
proceed against the fourteen.

In a further development Greenpeace has today written to the CPS asking it
for the Attorney-General's full advice to government on the legality of
the
war. Lawyers for the group claim access to the full advice is vital if the
defendants are to be allowed a proper defence. Greenpeace has given the
CPS
24 hours to produce the full advice, otherwise the group will renew its
request for the advice in court on the first day of the trial, set for
March
9th.

Greenpeace legal adviser Kate Harrison said, "The protesters thought the
war
was illegal. We think it is essential for a fair trial that they see the
full Attorney General's legal advice and the basis on which it was made."

"Since the Katharine Gun trial it would appear that the Attorney General
probably thought at the time of the protest that the war would be unlawful
and that the Foreign Office and other advisors thought so too."

The case against the fourteen will be held at Southampton Magistrate's
court
from March 9th.

Further information
Greenpeace opposed the war in Iraq and campaigned actively to prevent it.
We
joined the Stop the War coalition and made submissions to the Foreign
Affairs Select Committee on the illegality of the war, see
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk...0219to0222.pdf

For more information contact the Greenpeace press office
on 020 7865 8255 or 07801 212967 or 07801 212968
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/Multime...eport/6206.pdf