London – Eight days before Britain’s national election, Prime Minister Tony Blair faced the potentially damaging disclosure Wednesday of a document in which the government’s lawyer cautioned him privately about the legality of taking Britain to war in Iraq in 2003 without new U.N. authorization.
The document appeared to contradict Blair’s assertion, supported in public by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, that the war’s legality was clearly established by previous U.N. resolutions, a conclusion made public before Parliament voted to send troops to Iraq in March 2003. The document was a private legal opinion Goldsmith gave Blair earlier that month.
Goldsmith did not question its authenticity but denied that it showed he had concluded that taking Britain to war would be illegal. Rather, he said, he had laid out the legal arguments to be considered.
Blair had no comment.
His adversaries seized on the document to support their contention that he had misled the British people, Parliament and his Cabinet about the legal basis for the invasion.
It was not clear Wednesday whether the disclosure would reverse opinion surveys indicating that Blair was holding a decisive lead in the election campaign.
The war damaged Blair’s credibility, and it became a central issue in the upcoming May 5 election. His opponents argue that he took Britain into the conflict on a false premise – that Iraq possessed banned weapons.
In the leaked document, dated March 7, 2003, Goldsmith told Blair that the “safest legal course” would be to get a second U.N. resolution specifically authorizing the use of force to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. At the time, U.S. and British troops were massing on Iraq’s southern borders, and both nations were pressing for such a resolution.
Goldsmith offered a detailed argument that cited U.N. resolutions on the 1991 Gulf War and said “a court might well conclude” that existing resolutions – one threatening “serious consequences” if Hussein did not disarm – did not authorize war without a further resolution.