Tony Blair would still have led the country to war in Iraq even if he had known that it had no weapons of mass destruction.
The former Prime Minister has confessed that he would have had to use different arguments to justify toppling Saddam Hussein. But he says in an interview to be broadcast tomorrow morning that he would still have taken steps to remove the Iraqi dictator from power.
He also put the decision to go to war in Iraq in the context of a wider battle over Islam. He said: “I happen to think that there is a major struggle going on all over the world, really, which is about Islam and what is happening within Islam.” He said that this struggle had a “long way to go”.
At the time of the conflict Mr Blair, who is to be questioned by the Iraq inquiry early next year, based his decision to go to war on evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
He gives an indication of his motives in an interview with the former daytime host Fern Britton, to be screened on BBC One. Mr Blair, who converted to Roman Catholicism when he left office two and a half years ago, denied that his religious faith played a direct part in his decision to go to war. But his faith gave him the strength to hold to the decision and supported him during “the loneliness of decision-maker”.
He said it was the “threat” that Saddam presented to the region that was uppermost in his mind. The development of weapons of mass destruction was one aspect of that threat.
Mr Blair said that there had been 12 years of the United Nations going “to and fro” on the subject, and he noted that Saddam had used chemical weapons on his own people.
Asked by Britton if he would still have gone on had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction, he said: “I would still have thought it right to remove him.”
Parents of some of the servicemen who have died have refused to shake his hand and accused him of being a war criminal with blood on his hands.
Mr Blair said that he was prepared to carry that responsibility. “There’s no point in going into a situation of conflict and not understanding there is going to be a price paid.”
The former Prime Minister, who now spends much of his time in the Middle East, working as an envoy for the Quartet of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU, said that it was difficult to judge yet whether the decision to go to war had been helpful or not.
This week the head of MI6 said that Saddam’s Iraq was one of a number of countries where Britain would have liked regime change. Sir John Sawers, who was at the time Mr Blair’s private secretary for foreign affairs, told the Iraq inquiry that discussions had taken place in 2001 — two years before the invasion — on “political” actions that could help to undermine the Baathist regime.
However, Sir John insisted that there had been no talk at that stage in Whitehall of military action in Iraq. He said that the approach adopted was based on the methods that had led to the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. Among the proposals considered was support for opposition groups and indicting Saddam for war crimes that he had committed during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
“I think there are a lot of countries around the world where we would like to see a change of regime. That doesn’t mean one pursues active policies in that direction,” he said.
It was claimed last night that Mr Blair misled MPs by insisting that Britain was at risk from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction before ordering the invasion. A senior Conservative MP said that evidence to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war this week proved that the former Prime Minister was aware that new intelligence had established Saddam had no workable WMD missiles.
Sir John Scarlett, the head of the committee that oversaw intelligence in the build-up to the invasion in March 2003, told the inquiry that reports that Saddam did not have warheads capable of dispersing chemical weapons started at the end of 2002.
An intelligence update on March 10 — eight days before the crucial vote by MPs in favour of the war — reported that Iraq had “no missiles which could reach Israel and none which could carry germ or biological weapons”. All the intelligence reports went directly to the Prime Minister, Sir John said.
Richard Ottaway, a member of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, said that the evidence revealed that Mr Blair had repeatedly misled MPs. Mr Blair had described in detail the scale of Iraq’s armoury and said that Britain could not afford to back down in the face of the “clear and present danger” to national security posed by development of weapons of mass destruction. Inspections after the war revealed no evidence of workable chemical or biological weapons.
Sir John is due to be questioned again by the inquiry in private to avoid damaging national security.
Mr Blair is expected to give evidence next month or in early February.
Fern Britton
Age: 52
Education: Dr Challoner’s High School, Buckinghamshire; Central School of Speech and Drama
Career: After breakfast news with both BBC and GMTV found a niche presenting Ready Steady Cook. Spent ten years as Phillip Schofield's screen “wife” on ITV’s This Morning
The big interviews: Gordon Brown and Kerry Katona
Interview style: Like a doting mother asking if you are lying, and believing whatever you say, then apologising for questioning your judgment
Source:The times
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