Invasion of Iraq ‘lacked majority support’

By Gavin Cordon

Saturday, November 28, 2009

THE invasion of Iraq was of "questionable legitimacy", Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations at the time of the war said.

Jeremy Greenstock told the official inquiry into the war that although he believed the invasion was legal under international law, it lacked clear majority support both in the UN and among the population at home.

He disclosed that he had been so concerned about the pressure from the US, he had threatened to resign if there was not "at least one" new UN Security Council resolution which provided a basis for military action.

Greenstock said that while legal grounds had been established for the invasion in March 2003, the issue of whether it was "legitimate" in broader political terms remained in doubt.

"I regard our participation in the military action against Iraq in March 2003 as legal but of questionable legitimacy in that it did not have the democratically observable backing of the great majority of member states, or even perhaps of the majority of people inside Britain," he said.

Greenstock said he first became aware that Britain and the US were moving towards military action after Tony Blair met George Bush at the president’s Texas ranch in April 2002 – although he was not informed of what was said.

"That discussion was not totally visible to me. I was not being politically naive, but I was not being politically informed either," he said.

He did not believe Britain and the US could simply say Iraq was in breach of old Security Council resolutions dating back to the 1991 Gulf War requiring Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction as a basis for military action.

"I regarded it as necessary politically and legally to have a new resolution – or at least one new resolution," he said.

However, during the negotiations on resolution 1441 – which provided for the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq – he became concerned about "noises off" from Washington suggesting they were "a waste of time".

He said he warned Permanent Secretary Michael Jay in October 2002 that he was prepared to quit if the attempt to secure a resolution was abandoned. "I decided to say that if it happened to become British policy to go along with abandoning the UN route and go to the use of force without a further resolution, that I would have personal difficulties about that.

"Maybe I thought that I should be clear about that. Maybe I thought that that was a stiffener for London on what I thought should happen."

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, November 28, 2009