Goldsmith defends war advice

Thursday, 26 May 2005 12:00 AM

Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has again stated that he made "genuinely independent" conclusions about the legality of the war with Iraq.

He stressed that he was not pressured to change his war advice by anyone in Downing Street.

The peer told the Daily Telegraph the "conspiracy fantasies" were "simply untrue".

Lord Goldsmith stressed that in his law career he had previously had to give unwelcome advice to clients and "I would not have hesitated to give negative advice if that had been my conclusion."

Reiterating his legal experience as a deputy High Court judge, chairman of the Bar and 30 years practice, he said: "I have always operated on the basis that I do not tell clients just what they would said he had always reached his own decisions. I was not going to change that or throw that away - and I did not."

The Attorney General's legal advice on the Iraq war was leaked during the election campaign, after the Government had repeatedly refused to public the advice.

The memo - dated March 7 2003 - advised that obtaining a second United Nations resolution would be the safest cause of action and raised a number of legal concerns.

But, the advice published in the House of Commons 10 days later simply gave the opinion that war was legal without a second resolution, leading to accusations that he had been leant on and caveats had been removed.

Lord Goldsmith told the Daily Telegraph that he had decided to speak out now as his professional reputation and integrity had been criticised.

"I stand by my conclusion that military action was lawful," he said.

"That was a judgement I had to reach. I reached it and I stand by it and I want to reject the suggestions that I was leant on, or that this was somehow not my genuine opinion.

"These suggestions that this was not genuinely my view - these are fantasies and they need to be seen as such."

He said that the "revival" argument, which says that that the authority to use force against Iraq given in the 1990 Security Council resolution had been revived by resolution 1441 in 2002, meant that the war was legal.

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