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DUBROOM
ARTICLE SECTION |
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| Tony
Blair calls for New World Order |
13.07.2003
12.00pm - By ANDY McSMITH
and JO DILLON
Britain seeks new powers to attack
rogue states
LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony
Blair is appealing to the heads of Western
governments to agree a new world order that
would justify the war in Iraq even if Saddam
Hussein's elusive weapons of mass
destruction are never found.
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It would also give Western
powers the authority to attack any other sovereign
country whose ruler is judged to be inflicting
unnecessary suffering on his own people.
A Downing Street document, circulated among
foreign heads of state who are in London for a
summit, has provoked a fierce row between Mr Blair
and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder.
Mr Blair has involved British troops in five
conflicts overseas in his six years in office, and
appears to be willing to take part in many more.
The document echoes his well-known views on
"rights and responsibilities" by saying
that even for self-governing nation states
"the right to sovereignty brings associated
responsibilities to protect citizens".
This phrase is immediately followed by a paragraph
which appears to give the world's democracies
carte blanche to send troops anywhere there is
civil unrest or a tyrant who refuses to mend his
ways.
It says: "Where a population is suffering
serious harm, as a result of internal war,
insurgency, repression or state failure, and the
state in question is unwilling or unable to halt
or avert it, the principle of non-intervention
yields to the international responsibility to
protect."A political row with the German
Chancellor will add to Mr Blair's difficulties at
a time when the American and British intelligence
services have fallen out with each other over the
question of whether Saddam was seeking to
construct a nuclear bomb before he was overthrown.
In Washington, the US government has withdrawn the
claim that Iraqi agents were in Niger trying to
buy uranium.
The head of the CIA, George Tenet, has accepted
the blame for allowing this claim to be included
in President George Bush's State of the Nation
speech, in which it was attributed to British
intelligence.
The former foreign secretary Robin Cook has
challenged Mr Blair to publish any evidence
Britain has to back up the uranium story.
He told The Independent on Sunday: "The
longer they delay coming up with it, the greater
the suspicion will become that they don't really
believe it themselves.
"There is one simple question the Government
must answer when the Commons meets on Monday: why
did their evidence not convince the CIA? If it was
not good enough to be in the President's address,
it was not good enough to go in the Prime
Minister's dossier.
"A month ago I gave Tony Blair the
opportunity to admit that in good faith he had got
it wrong when he warned of the uranium deal.
Now that President Bush has made just that
admission it looks as if Tony Blair would have
been wise to get his in first."But Jack
Straw, the Foreign Secretary, insisted yesterday
the information did not come from British
intelligence but from some other, unnamed country,
and that it was accurate.
In a letter to the chairman of the Commons foreign
affairs committee, Donald Anderson, Mr Straw said:
"UK officials were confident that the
dossier's statement was based on reliable
intelligence which we had not shared with the
US."This public disagreement with the CIA,
coupled with anger in Britain over the fate of
British suspects held at the US base at Guantanamo
Bay in Cuba, forms an awkward background for Mr
Blair's visit to Washington on Thursday, when he
will meet President Bush.
Dr Hans Blix, the former head of the UN weapons
inspection team in Iraq, has told the IoS that he
believes the British government
"over-interpreted" the available
intelligence about Iraq's weapons.
Dr Blix was particularly scathing about the claim
made in a British government dossier, released
last September, that Iraq had chemical and
biological weapons "deployable within 45
minutes".
"I think that was a fundamental mistake.
I don't know how they calculated this figure of 45
minutes.
That seems pretty far off the mark to me," Dr
Blix said.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman,
Menzies Campbell, said: "Day by day the case
for an independent scrutiny of the lead-up to the
war against Iraq becomes irresistible.
Only full disclosure can restore the reputation of
this Government."The failure to find the
weapons is damaging public trust in the Prime
Minister and his relations with the Labour Party,
with many backbench MPs who supported the decision
to go to war in March now saying they might have
changed their minds if they had known that the
weapons might never be found.
The former international development secretary
Clare Short, who resigned after the war, will urge
the Prime Minister in an interview broadcast on
GMTV today to resign before things get
"nastier".
This brought a strong rebuke yesterday from the
Home Secretary, David Blunkett.
He said: "Clare Short is being typically
self-indulgent.
It is important to get behind the Prime Minister
and focus on the things that matter to people,
like decent opportunities and economic prosperity.
I do not understand why people would plot to try
to change the most successful leader in the Labour
Party's history."There was also support for
the Prime Minister from his old ally, Bill
Clinton.
At a London conference organised by Mr Blair's
ally Peter Mandelson and attended by Chilean
President Ricardo Lagos, Canadian Prime Minister
Jean Chretien and hundreds of Labour Party
supporters, the former US president urged the left
to stop attacking the Prime Minister or risk the
renaissance of conservatism.
"If we want to prevail we will have to learn
how to make our case better," he said.
"We're living in a new world in which we will
be swallowed whole if we do not, and all the
evidence of the good we have done will be lost if
we give in to inter-party squabbles on the left
and lay down in the face of attacks from the
right."
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