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Blair turns heat back on Short
Tony Blair yesterday made the final public breach with Clare Short when he branded his erstwhile cabinet colleague a liar for claiming that he made a "secret agreement" with George Bush as long ago as last September to wage war on Iraq. As opposition politicians and dissident Labour MPs piled the pressure on the government, the prime minister discarded his usual references to "Clare" to say that allegations by "Insisting that he stands "100% behind the evidence, based on intelligence, that we presented to people," Mr Blair rejected repeated claims that intelligence data was manipulated. "The idea that we doctored intelligence reports in order to invent some notion about a 45-minute capability of delivering WMD, the idea that we doctored such intelligence is completely and totally false," he said. It was all cleared through Whitehall's joint intelligence committee (JIC). Then came the stroke which severed his personal ties with Ms Short, an ally over aid and Africa since 1997. "The idea, as apparently Clare Short is saying, that I made some secret agreement with George Bush back last September that we would invade Iraq in any event at a particular time is also completely and totally untrue." Clare, you're not getting invited to Crawford, either. Mr Blair is sticking his neck out on what inspection teams eventually find - or do not find - in Iraq. Aides appear to be confident that he will be vindicated among most voters, those whose minds are not fixed against him and the war. Unlike the back benches, especially Clare and Robin. The prime minister's tough language came as his political opponents joined forces with Labour dissidents to exploit his difficulties over the failure to uncover banned weapons. Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said: "In the history of Labour party fighting this is going to be as bitter as some of the left-right splits that ultimately produced the SDP. It used to be that Labour ministers kept their venom for their memoirs. It now seems that some can't wait that long." The Tories indicated that they may be prepared to abandon their bipartisan approach to Iraq by calling on the prime minister to publish the evidence to prove his claim that Saddam Hussein had banned weapons. Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, stopped short of calling for a full inquiry. But he said: "The prime minister says that he has the answers in information not yet made public. He should now come forward with those answers: firstly, to dampen down suspicions and, secondly, to show the people why he did what he did. If he fails to do so, then he might not be able to avoid an inquiry, but to call for one at this stage is premature." "Attention, attention: the honeymoon will be over in five minutes. Repeat, the honeymoon will be over in five minutes. That is all." But Paul Goodman, the Tory MP for Wycombe, a member of the team which prepares Iain Duncan Smith for his weekly Commons clash with the prime minister, echoed Robin Cook's call for a full independent inquiry. "The simple fact now is that the government's reputation for spin has come back to haunt it," he said in a letter to No 10. One dissident Labour member, Malcolm Savidge, the MP for Aberdeen North, told Radio 4's The World at One the row was potentially more serious than the Watergate scandal which forced Richard Nixon out of the White House in 1974. Sad that these jokers can't tell the difference between Tony and Tricky Dick. Posted by: Steve White 2003-06-03 |
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