LONDON: Newly-declassified UK government documents published Tuesday reveal the frustrations of then-prime minister Tony Blair and his government with French leader Jaques Chirac for blocking UN-backed military action in Iraq in 2003.
\nMinutes of an emergency cabinet meeting on March 17, 2003 \u2014 a week after Chirac said he would veto any resolution approving military action \u2014 showed UK ministers agreed \u201cthe French attitude had undermined the mechanism of the UN to enforce the will of the international community.\u201d
\n\u201cWe had tried our utmost\u201d but the French \u201cwere not prepared to accept that if President Saddam Hussein of Iraq did not comply with UN obligations, military action should follow,\u201d Blair told the meeting, according to files released by the National Archives.
\nBritain joined the US-led military action to oust Saddam in 2003, despite fierce opposition across the country, with Blair highlighting allegations that the Iraqi dictator had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
\nThe WMD accusations fueled by the administration of then president George W. Bush were later proven to be false.
\nAccording to the files, then foreign minister Jack Straw told cabinet \u201ceffectively, one member of the UN Security Council had torpedoed the whole process,\u201d and accused Chirac, who died in 2019, of deciding to \u201copen up a strategic divide between France and the UK.\u201d
\nIn a meeting three days later, Straw said Chirac \u201cappeared to be positioning himself … (to) become leader of one side of the bi-polar world he advocated,\u201d in contrast to a US-dominated world.
\nBy contrast, ministers were told in the March 17 meeting that the Labour government \u201cwas motivated by a world view which promoted justice, good governance and pluralism and this set it apart from other governments of the industrialized world.\u201d
\nThe final minute of the meeting read: \u201cSumming up, the prime minister said that the diplomatic process was now at an end; Saddam Hussein would be given an ultimatum to leave Iraq; and the House of Commons would be asked to endorse the use of military action against Iraq to enforce compliance, if necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UK joined the US-led invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, despite around one million people marching in London to protest against military intervention.
\nThe invasion and subsequent war severely dented Blair\u2019s popularity, culminating in the independent Chilcot inquiry, which concluded in 2016 he had deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by the Iraqi regime.
\nBlair expressed \u201csorrow, regret and apology\u201d for mistakes made in planning the conflict, while his influential press chief at the time of the war, Alastair Campbell, said the decision would \u201cweigh heavily on him.\u201d. \u201cfor the rest of his days.\u201d
\nCampbell was also caught up in controversy when the BBC reported he had \u201csexed up\u201d a dossier on Iraq\u2019s military capabilities, claims he has denied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: Newly-declassified UK government documents published Tuesday reveal the frustrations of then-prime minister Tony Blair and his government with French leader Jaques Chirac for blocking UN-backed military action in Iraq in 2003. Minutes of an emergency cabinet meeting on March 17, 2003 \u2014 a week after Chirac said he would veto any resolution approving military …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":74959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74962,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74951\/revisions\/74962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}