Blair 'summoned' to Iraq inquiry
IRNA
London, June 7, IRNA -- Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Director of
Communications Alastair Campbell have been summoned to answer
questions from an all-party committee on the intelligence used to
justify the war against Iraq.
Labor chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee Donald
Anderson was said to have written to Blair and his advisor to appear
at back-to-back public hearings later this month, but according to the
Independent newspaper both are expected to refuse.
The parliamentary committee is launching its own inquiry into the
Iraq war in addition to the inquiry by the Intelligence and Security
Committee, announced by the prime minister on Wednesday, but which
will be held behind closed doors.
Blair is also resisting calls from the opposition Conservative
Party, the Liberal Democrats and some Labor backbenchers for a full
judicial inquiry following allegations that intelligence was doctored
by the government to justify the war.
Labor MP George Galloway, who has been suspended from the ruling
party because of his outspoken opposition to the war, warned on Friday
night that the Iraq war would become the prime minister's 'Watergate',
which forced US President Richard Nixon from office.
"This Iraq war was one of the greatest crimes in Britain's long
imperial history. Like other crimes, it was all based on a big lie,"
Galloway said at an anti-war rally organized by the Stop the War
Coalition in Preston north-west England.
"We are at the beginning of exactly the same kind of Watergate
scandal which, layer by layer, will be pulled apart," he was quoted
saying by the Lancashire Evening Post.
The suspended Labor MP predicted that the scandal will end 'in
exactly the same way with the departure from the political stage of
the person at the center of the conspiracy, in this case, Tony Blair."
HC/AH/AR
End
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
