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Britain's opposition chides Blair over Iraq war
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-30 11:34

Michael Howard, the Conservative Party leader who hopes to be Britain's next prime minister, said Friday that Tony Blair is a liar — about the quality of prewar intelligence and about the weakness of the legal case for the invasion to bring down Saddam Hussein.

"I'm not criticizing him (Blair) for going to war. I'm criticizing him for not telling the truth and for not having a plan" for securing the peace afterwards, Howard said.

"He has a track record of not telling the truth. That's why character and trust are an issue in this election."

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair delivers an election speech to Labour Party supporters in Long Eaton central England, Friday April 29, 2005. Britain goes to the polls in a general election on May 5. [AP]

Howard, the Tories' third leader since Blair took office in a landslide victory in 1997, has attacked the government on several fronts — immigration, crime, health and the decision to go to war — so far, without denting the government's lead in opinion polls.

Howard's focus on Iraq is compromised by his own support for the war, and his stance that he'd have supported the Bush administration even if he'd known Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction.

But Howard clearly sees political capital in questioning whether voters can trust Blair — a tactic that could pay off, either by rallying his party or making disenchanted Labour supporters stay home on election day.

Britain's opposition Conservative leader Michael Howard, surrounded by children from the Oriel secondary school in Crawley, England smiles as he poses for the cameras, Thursday April 28, 2005. [AP]

In a poll published Friday in The Guardian newspaper, 44 percent of the sample agreed the prime minister was a liar, compared to 29 percent who felt the same about Howard.

The war became a major campaign issue this week as Attorney General Lord Goldsmith's advice on the legality of the conflict was leaked in part, then released in full by the prime minister's office.

The memo, which Blair had steadfastly refused to disclose for two years, revealed Goldsmith's doubts about the legality of going to war without a second U.N. Security Council resolution. That contrasted with his publicly disclosed summary days later which said a second resolution was not necessary.

Until Blair released the text Thursday, Howard said, "we didn't know that the advice was full of caveats and warnings. We didn't know that it changed so much."

Former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock said he fears the dispute over Iraq has knocked the party's campaign off course with just days to go before next Thursday's vote.

"It is a massive diversion of the campaign for reasons which are understandable — it's a question of war and peace and the conduct of government, so there is a legitimate matter in any general election in a democracy," Kinnock said in an interview to be broadcast this weekend.

However, Blair's personal rating has risen: 44 percent of those surveyed in The Guardian poll said he would make the best prime minister, up seven points in a week, while Howard's rating dropped from 27 percent to 22 percent.

The survey of 1,547 adults by ICM had a margin of error of three percentage points. Interviews were conducted Sunday through Tuesday — before Goldsmith's memo was published on Thursday.

Blair, 51, and Howard, 63, were both heckled by a television audience Thursday night as they defended their positions on the war.

Blair would have lost the crucial vote in the House of Commons on going to war without the help of most of the Conservative members.

Though Howard wasn't the Tory leader then, he hasn't disavowed the war but has hit on issues such as Blair's use of what proved to be flawed intelligence.

"We know that the intelligence said on its face that it was limited, sporadic and patchy," Howard said. "He (Blair) said the intelligence was extensive, detailed and authoritative. There's no way you can match up those two sets of words."

Howard said a strong case for war could have been made, even knowing that Saddam didn't possess the weapons of mass destruction he was thought to have.

"The argument would have been Saddam Hussein has possessed weapons of mass destruction in the past, had used them, would have tried to get them in the future ... was therefore a threat to the peace of the region and a threat to the peace of the wider world, and was in breach of many vital Security Council resolutions," Howard said.

"You take all those things together, and I believe there was a legal case for going to war."

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