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Blair insists he would resign if case for Iraq war was a lie

IRNA

London, Aug. 28, IRNA -- Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted Thursday 
that he would have had to resign if the allegations made by the BBC 
that the government exaggerated the case for the Iraq war were true. 
"This was an allegation that we had behaved in a way that, were it 
true, as I say tested - the allegation being true it would have 
merited my resignation," Blair told the inquiry into the death of 
Iraq arms inspector David Kelly. 
He said that the BBC report in May that claimed that his office 
had exaggerated Saddam Hussein`s threat in the government`s dossier 
on Iraq`s arms was "an absolutely fundamental charge." 
"It is one thing to say we disagree with the government, you 
should not have gone to war. People can have a disagreement about 
that," Blair said in emphasising the BBC claim that was sourced on an 
interview with Kelly. 
Referring to the report on BBC radio`s Today programme, he said 
"any person listening to that would think we had done something 
improper, not that we just got our facts mixed up." 
The only way the dispute was going to go away was if the BBC said 
"clearly and unequivocally" that the original story was wrong, and it 
was pretty obvious they were not going to, the Prime Minister said in 
explaining his personal concern about the row that embroiled Kelly. 
He said it was "absolutely wrong" for BBC witnesses to suggest he 
did not use the government`s claim that Iraq could use weapons of 
mass destruction within 45 minutes again after it appeared in the 
September dossier. 
Asked why the government published the dossier, Blair told the 
inquiry that "the clamour for us to produce the evidence for this was 
obviously very very strong." 
"The purpose of the dossier was to respond to the call to disclose 
intelligence that we knew, but at that stage, the strategy was not to 
use the dossier as the immediate reason for going to conflict," he 
said. 
But he denied that he was aware of any unhappiness amongst members 
of the intelligence services with the dossier drafting process, as 
has been claimed. 
HC/212 
End