• Former PM feared facing ‘show trial’
• Leak reveals plan to provoke invasion
- The Observer/UK, Sunday 21 June 2009
Tony Blair announces on 20 March 2003 that British servicemen and women are engaged from air, land and sea in the war against Iraq. Photograph: PA
Tony Blair urged Gordon Brown to hold the independent inquiry into the Iraq war in secret because he feared that he would be subjected to a “show trial” if it were opened to the public, the Observer can reveal.
The revelation that the former prime minister – who led Britain to war in March 2003 – had intervened will fuel the anger of MPs, peers, military leaders and former civil servants, who were appalled by Brown’s decision last week to order the investigation to be conducted behind closed doors.
Blair, who resisted pressure for a full public inquiry while he was prime minister, appears to have taken a deliberate decision not to express his view in person to Brown because he feared it might leak out.
Instead, messages on the issue were relayed through others to Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, who conveyed them to the prime minister in the days leading up to the announcement of the inquiry last week.
A Downing Street spokesman last night said: “We have always been clear that we consulted a number of people before announcing the commencement of the inquiry, including former government figures. We are not going to get into the nature of those discussions.”
Blair is believed to have been alarmed by the prospect of giving evidence in public and under oath about the use of intelligence and about his numerous private discussions with US President George Bush over plans for war. A spokesman for the former Labour leader would only say last night: “This was a decision for the current prime minister, not for Tony Blair.”
The Observer reveals today that six weeks before the war, at a meeting in Washington, the two leaders were forced to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second UN resolution legitimising military action.
Bush told Blair that the US had drawn up a provocative plan “to fly U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, painted in UN colours, over Iraq with fighter cover”. Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes, he would put Iraq in breach of UN resolutions and legitimise military action.
Last night, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, whose party opposed the war from the outset, said: “If this is true about Blair demanding secrecy, it is outrageous that an inquiry into the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez is being muzzled to suit the individual needs of the man who took us to war.”
Brown provoked uproar in the Commons on Monday when he announced the inquiry’s scope, membership and remit. Following protests from military leaders and mandarins, including former cabinet secretary Lord Butler, he announced a partial retreat on Thursday, asking the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, to consider opening a few sessions to the public.
But the move did not ease pressure for a total climbdown. Last night, Brown appeared cornered as MPs of all parties prepared for a Commons debate on Wednesday in which they look certain to back calls for the inquiry to hold sessions in public “whenever possible”.
A Tory motion likely to win wide cross-party backing also calls for the committee to include military experts. The Lib Dems are demanding that it also include constitutional and legal experts to assess the legality of the invasion.
In a sign that the government is preparing to retreat, Chilcot is to meet both Clegg and the Conservative leader, David Cameron, on Tuesday, before the debate. MPs believe that he may then announce a bigger public element to the inquiry in order to avoid the humiliation for Brown of defeat in the Commons.
Chilcot will come under pressure from both leaders to open up the inquiry. Clegg wants a guarantee that witnesses such as Blair will give evidence under oath, while Cameron will ask if the committee can issue an interim report early next year, ahead of a likely spring election.
The Tories say that if Brown does not order a U-turn, an incoming Conservative government will “reserve the right” to widen the scope of the inquiry and increase its powers where necessary after an election.
Sir Christopher Meyer, who was the British ambassador in Washington in the run-up to the war and is likely to be called to give evidence to the inquiry, yesterday backed calls to make it public. “It should be open,” he said. “I think it should also have powers of subpoena and people should give evidence on oath. I would be perfectly comfortable with that.”
He said the case for openness was increased because there had been “a ton of stuff” published in the US, both via official inquiries and in memoirs written by key players, making public what had previously been confidential. “I would be perfectly happy for the whole embassy archive in Washington [to be disclosed],” he added. “I haven’t got a problem with that being made available. Things were very sensitive then, but this is 2009.”
On his blog, Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former spin doctor, says that “on balance” he believes Brown was right to order the inquiry to be held in private. “I can see the arguments for both sides – openness and transparency favours a public inquiry, but it may well be that the inquiry will do a better job freed from the frenzy of 24-hour media.”
In a letter to the Observer, a group of current and former Labour MPs, headed by Alan Simpson, the chairman of Labour Against the War, demands a complete rethink. “Neither the public nor parliament will understand how the prime minister’s ‘new era of openness’ can begin with an Iraq inquiry held behind closed doors,” says the letter.
More pictures – These images depict strong violence and may be unsuitable for some readers
Peace and Justice Post 
Police crack down on Iran protests
June 21, 2009in the streets of the capital, Tehran [AFP]
Riot police in Iran have used tear gas, water cannon and batons to disperse about 3,000 people attempting to protest over the disputed presidential election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president.
Witnesses said that dozens of people were hospitalised after being beaten by police and pro-government militia in the capital, Tehran, on Saturday.
“Lots of guards on motorbikes closed in on us and beat us brutally,” one protester said.
“As we were running away the Basiji [militia] were waiting in side alleys with batons, but people opened their doors to us trapped in alleys.”
Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, a defeated reformist candidate, had planned to stage a rally in the city’s Revolutionary Square, but arrived to find their way blocked by police.
A witness told Al Jazeera that police were turning people away.
“The roads were pretty much blocked by the militia, they were out with retractable metal batons. It looked like they were very frantically trying to keep people from the area,” he said.
Protests ‘quelled’
Amateur video of Saturday’s protests, which could not be independently verified, showed dozens of Iranians running down a street after police fired tear gas.
Other footage showed protesters trying to give first aid to a badly injured woman in the street.
The protesters apparently threw stones at the police and set fires in the streets.
Al Jazeera’s Alireza Ronaghi, reporting from Tehran, said that the protests had largely been quelled by Saturday evening.
“The presence of security forces were very high, they definitely wanted to take back the streets of Tehran … right now I don’t expect that many protesters are concentrated anywhere in Tehran,” he said.
He said that state television had quoted the head of Iran’s police force as thanking the Iranian people for not taking to the streets and taking the police warnings seriously.
As the clashes took place, a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up outside the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution in 1979, injuring at least two people, local news agencies reported.
As night fell, the protesters kept up their show of defiance shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) from the rooftops, a deliberate echo of a move made during the Islamic revolution in 1979.
Barack Obama, the US president, condemned the violence and urged Tehran to allow Mousavi’s supporters to stage peaceful protests.
“The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,” he said.
“We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.”
Nick Spicer, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Washington DC, said: “It’s his [Obama] strongest language to date.
“He’s putting the blame for the violence squarely on the Iranian government saying that the world is watching what is going on in Iran, not just that the United States is watching
“Basically he is calling the whole world as a witness to what’s going on in Iran.
“He’s trying to make this not an Iran-America thing, but a global human rights argument that he’s putting to the leaders of Iran.”
‘Ready for martyrdom’
In a statement posted on the website of his Kalemeh newspaper, Mousavi repeated his demand for the elections results to be annulled and hit out at a speech by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
“If this huge volume of cheating and changing the votes … which has hurt people’s trust, is presented as the very evidence of the lack of cheating, then it will butcher the republican aspect of the system and the idea that Islam is incompatible with a republic will be proven,” he said.
Anoushka Marashlian, an independent Middle East analyst, told Al Jazeera: “I think the momentum would be very difficult to maintain now because of the nature of the protests that have become more violent.
“They are not only defying the results of the elections but they are now perceived to be defying the directions of the supreme leader, and so, in essence, questioning the foundation of the Islamic Republic,” she said.
In a sermon on Friday, Khamenei ruled out any fraud in the June 12 vote and stressed there could be no doubting the re-election of Ahmadinejad.
An unnamed ally of Mousavi told the Reuters news agency that the former prime minister has said he would continue his fight and was “ready for martyrdom”.
Earlier on Saturday, Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, another defeated presidential candidate had declined to meet the Guardian Council, Iran’s highest legislative body, concerning 646 complaints of voting irregularities in the poll.
State television quoted a council spokesman as saying that the Guardian Council had expressed its readiness to “randomly” recount up to 10 per cent of the ballots.
The contested result gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a tally of about 63 per cent, to Mousavi’s 34 per cent.
Share this:
Tags: Iran, police, protests, repression
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Iran, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »