THE Government came under fresh pressure today to explain the legal advice on which it committed British forces to the Iraq war.
Ministers faced a new claim that the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith QC, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair less than two weeks before the invasion that military action could be deemed illegal.
The Government was reportedly so concerned that it might be prosecuted that it set up a team of lawyers to prepare for legal action in an international court.
A Parliamentary answer issued days before the war in the name of Lord Goldsmith was actually drawn up in Downing Street, according to
a report in the Guardian.
The newspaper based its claims on a book called
Lawless World by Philippe Sands, a QC in Cherie Blair’s Matrix chambers and professor of international law at University College, London.
Lord Goldsmith is said to have warned Mr Blair in a document on March 7, 2003 that the use of force against Iraq could be illegal.
Mr Sands wrote: "So concerned was the Government about the possibility of such a case that it took steps to put together a legal team to prepare for possible international litigation."
The Government has refused to publish the March 7 document.
On March 13, 2003, Lord Goldsmith is said to have told Lord Falconer, then a Home Office minister, and Baroness Morgan, Mr Blair’s director of political and government relations, that he believed an invasion would indeed be legal without a new United Nations Security Council resolution, according to Mr Sands. On March 17, in response to a question from a Labour peer, Lord Goldsmith stated that it was "plain" that Iraq continued to be in material breach of UN resolution 1441.
Mr Sands said Lord Goldsmith’s answer appeared to be "neither a summary nor a precis of any of the earlier advice which the Attorney General had provided".
The Guardian reported that, separately, it had learned that Lord Goldsmith told the inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war that his meeting with Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan was informal. The paper said that Lord Goldsmith also made clear that he did not draw up the March 17 written Parliamentary answer.
They "set out my view", he told the Butler inquiry, in a reference to Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan.
A spokesman for Lord Goldsmith told the paper: "The Attorney has said on many occasions he is not going to discuss process issues."
The March 17 Parliamentary answer was the "Attorney’s own answer", the spokesman added.
Former foreign secretary and leader of the Commons Robin Cook, who quit the Cabinet over the war, said of the disclosure: "It dramatically reveals the extent to which the legal opinion on the war was the product of a political process."
He said the case for seeing the Attorney General’s original advice was now overwhelming.
The Livingston MP added: "What was served up to Parliament as the view of the Attorney General turned out to be the view of two of the closest aides of the Prime Minister."
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman and MP for Fife North East, said the Government’s position had now been seriously undermined.
He said: "The substance of the Attorney General’s advice, and the process by which it was partially published, simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
"The issue is all the more serious since the Government motion passed by the House of Commons on March 18, 2003 endorsing military action against Iraq was expressly based on that advice.
"The public interest can only be served now by the fullest disclosure."
