London, January 27: This Friday, former British prime minister Tony Blair will be given yet another chance to stop the traffic.
However, the extensive security measures laid on for Blair’s testimony at the Iraq War inquiry are designed not so much to signify his importance as to protect him from the wrath of protestors and relatives of the war dead.
Anti-war protestors have vowed to form a “gauntlet of hate” outside the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in central London where Blair is due for a six-hour questioning session.
In their view, Blair is facing his “judgement day” over his 2003 decision to join the US in the invasion of Iraq – which he is expected to justify citing the circumstances and the information available to him at the time.
The 56-year-old former British leader has become a hate figure in the eyes of many Britons opposed to the war, a status that has not been reduced by his accumulation of an estimated fortune of 15 million pounds (24 million dollars) since he left office in 2007.
Blair, who is the official representative of the UN’s Middle East quartet, has amassed several properties and assumed a whole string of highly-lucrative posts in banking and business, as well as consultancies, book deals and speaking engagements.
Only this week, he signed a six-figure contract to become a paid speaker for a leading London-based hedge fund.
Late last year, however, Blair’s aspiration to become the new President of the European Union (EU) failed, even though he was promoted by supporters as a high-profile candidate who could “stop the traffic” from Washington to Beijing.
“Wanted. Tony Blair for war crimes. Arrest him and claim your reward,” one columnist in the left-liberal Guardian newspaper wrote ahead of the hearing this week.
For the Times, Blair’s appearance is the “modern day equivalent of the public hangings where crowds gathered around the gallows to jeers.”
But the anger directed at Blair goes much beyond the issue of Iraq, said the paper. “It’s about a wider sense of betrayal. For many voters, the Iraq war was symbolic of a more general loss of trust.”
Adding a humourous touch, the paper’s cartoon showed inquiry chairman John Chilcot thanking Blair “for speaking to us,” prompting the reply: “That will be 200,000 pounds plus expenses.”
But Blair’s wealth and newly-won status as an elder statesman are likely to be of little concern to the fathers and mothers of the 179 young British soldiers who died in Iraq – and who have been allocated 20 places in the 60-seat public gallery of the inquiry chamber.
One of them will be Reg Keyes, the father of Lance Corporal Tom Keyes, who has been searching for answers since his son, 20-year-old Lance Corporal Tom Keyes, was killed by an angry mob in Basra in June, 2003.
“I don’t want revenge, I want accountability,” said Keyes. “Surely he (Blair) can’t take the country to war on the basis of a false claim on weapons of mass destruction – a war in which almost 180 British troops and thousands of Iraqis have died,” said Keyes in a BBC interview.
His anger, he added, had been increased by Blair’s recent shock admission in a television interview that the invasion of Iraq would have taken place regardless of whether or not any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) were found.
But Keyes admitted that the relatives would probably not receive substantive answers to all their questions. “He is a very good actor,” Keyes said of the former prime minister, who bears the nickname Teflon Tony on account of his smooth communicating skills.
Nonetheless, the session is likely to be difficult.
Since it started hearing witnesses last November, the Iraq inquiry, an independent panel of five experts called upon by the government to investigate the 2001-2009 period from the run-up to the invasion to the end of the war, have discredited – if not demolished – most of the fundamentals on which the decision to go to war were based.
The inquiry has heard that Blair, in private letters to former US President George W Bush, signalled British military backing for the invasion as early as 2002.
There is also the issue of whether a “secret deal” to go to war was struck between Blair and Bush dined alone at Bush’ Crawford ranch in Texas in April, 2002, and Blair’s now discredited claim that Saddam could unleash his weapons of mass destruction “within 45 minutes.
But, the crucial question for Blair to answer will be, in the opinion of experts, whether or not he ignored clear legal advice that going to war with Iraq without the authorization of a second UN resolution would violate international law.
A string of top government legal advisers, including the former attorney general, have told the inquiry this week that the government was warned there was “no imminent threat” from Iraq to justify military action on the basis of self-defence.
The controversial 2002 claim, said to have reached the files of the intelligence services from the lips of an Iraqi taxi driver, has “haunted us ever since,” former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the inquiry last week.
–Agencies