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British opposition party leader condemns Iraq war
Jordan Times, Saturday, September 27, 2003
LONDON (AP) — An opposition party leader on Thursday accused "a small clique" within the government of ignoring public opinion and steering Britain into war in Iraq. Speaking at his party's annual conference, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said the House of Commons might not have backed military action to topple Saddam Hussein had lawmakers known all the facts.
"This is supposed to be a parliamentary democracy. But what we have seen is a small clique driving us into war," Kennedy told delegates at the conference in Brighton, southern England.
The Lib Dems are Britain's third largest party, with 54 lawmakers in the House of Commons, compared with Labour's 409 and the Conservatives' 163. That's the most the party has ever elected, and it is currently riding at its highest level in opinion polls for 14 years.
While Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith vigorously backed military action, Kennedy insisted UN weapons inspectors must be given more time to find Iraq's alleged arsenal of illicit weapons.
The coalition's failure to find such chemical and biological weapons, which were Prime Minister Tony Blair's principal rationale for going to war, has dogged the government for months, as have allegations Blair's office manipulated intelligence material to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam.
"If the British House of Commons had known then what it knows now, about the events leading up to that fateful parliamentary debate and vote on committing our forces into war in Iraq, then the outcome could and should have been fundamentally different," said Kennedy.
"But, of course, parliament did not know these things.
"Because the government's instinct is to shroud itself in secrecy," he added.
On March 18, lawmakers voted 412 to 149 to use "all means necessary" for disarming Iraq.
The Lib Dems have been in a jubilant mood since the party seized one of Labour's safest parliamentary seats in a special election last week.
Lib Dem candidate Sarah Teather seized a seat which Labour had previously won with one of the biggest majorities of the 2001 elections. The 29-year-old attributed her victory to Kennedy's opposition to the war.
According to a national ICM poll published in September, 28 per cent of respondents said they would vote Lib Dem, compared with 35 per cent for Labour and 30 per cent for the Conservative Party. In the 2001 national election, Kennedy's party captured 19 per cent of the vote, compared with Labour's 44 per cent and the Conservatives' 30 per cent.
Historically, the Lib Dems have struggled to turn public support into parliamentary seats. Their advocacy of higher taxes has been regarded as a liability.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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