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Draft dossier prompts new calls for Iraq war inquiry

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Feb 19, IRNA
UK-Iraq
Britain's two main opposition parties have led renewed calls into a fully independent inquiry into the Iraq war following the belated publication of an initial draft of the government's discredit dossier on Saddam Hussein's arms threat.

The Conservative's shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, said the draft, written by the Foreign Office's former head of news, John Williams, was "further evidence that spin doctors, not intelligence analysts" were told about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." "What is really needed is a full-scale privy council inquiry into the origins and conduct of the Iraq war," Hague said after the Foreign Office released the draft on Monday under the country's Freedom of Information Act (FOI).

The Liberal Democrat's shadow foreign secretary, Edward Davey also said the government, which previously insisted the final dossier was the work of the intelligence services, "cannot continue to deny the major role that spin doctors played."

"The core analysis of the threat allegedly posed by Iraq is the same in both documents. A press official should never have been drafting a document that ended up being used as the justification for going to war," Davey said.

In response to the new calls, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's official spokesman said that the position on an inquiry remained as it had for some time.

"This was not something that we would consider whilst troops were still stationed in Iraq," the spokesman told journalists at his afternoon briefing on Monday.

Publishing the draft, Foreign Secretary David Miliband insisted that the draft, written in September 2002, "was not commissioned as part of the formal drafting process and was not used as the basis for the dossier which the Government subsequently published." But several British dailies Tuesday spoke of a strong resemblance to the government's final version that provided justification for the 2003 invasion, before it was later discredited.

"An analysis of the two dossiers shows that each lists similar intelligence judgments about the threat from Iraq, although they appear in a different order," the Times said.

The Guardian said it was "fresh evidence" that a senior government press officer was closely involved. It showed Williams used the same sources as the Joint Intelligence Committee, which claimed to be responsible for the final dossier, it said.

The publication came after the press officer, who worked for Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at the time, expressed his regret for writing the first draft.

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