London, February 03: Former minister Clare Short accused Tony Blair of lying over the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and said she believed the government’s chief lawyer at the time had misled the Cabinet over its legality.
Short, a long-time Blair critic who was then international development secretary, disputed evidence the former prime minister gave last week to an inquiry into the war, saying he had sidelined the Cabinet and kept ministers in the dark.
Discussions were limited and there had been a “block on communications,” said Short, who voted in favor of the 2003 invasion but quit the government shortly afterward because Blair had “conned” her about the UN having a lead role.
Last Friday, Blair made a robust defense of his decision to go to war, saying Saddam Hussein had posed a threat to the world and had to be disarmed or removed. He also told the inquiry there had been “substantive discussion” with senior ministers in the Cabinet.
But Short said she had been excluded from talks and that Blair had not wanted Iraq discussed in the Cabinet because he was afraid of leaks to the media.
“There was secretiveness and deception on top of that,” she told the Chilcot inquiry which is examining Britain’s role in the war and its aftermath. “Normal communications were being closed down.”
She accused Blair of being “frantic” to support the United States and said claims the French would have vetoed any second UN resolution authorizing military action had been untrue.
——-Agencies