Blair blasts BBC for "attack on my integrity" over Iraq dossier

LONDON (AFP) Jul 06, 2003
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a Sunday newspaper interview, accused the BBC of having committed "an attack on my integrity" by reporting that he and his staff embellished a report on the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war.

Speaking to the Observer on the eve of a House of Commons foreign affairs committee report on the way the government took Britain to war, Blair held back from demanding an apology from the public broadcaster.

But he said: "If people make a claim and it turns out to be wrong, they should accept it is wrong."

"Look, as far as I am concernd, the issue of what the BBC has done, I take it as about as serious an attack on my integrity as there could possibly be. The charge is untrue and I hope that they will accept that," he said.

"I think they should accept it. That is all I am going to say."

BBC radio reported in late May, as Blair was visiting British troops in Iraq, that a September dossier on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction was "sexed up" despite reservations among intelligence chiefs.

It quoted an intelligence source as citing, by way of example, the dossier's claim that Iraq under Saddam Hussein could deploy chemical or biological weapons in as little as 45 minutes.

The issue has dogged Blair enough to cost him confidence among voters, according to the results of a poll in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Sixty-two percent of respondents thought Blair's media strategist Alastair Campbell had "sexed up" the dossier, while 66 percent said they trusted the BBC to tell the truth.

The poll, by the YouGov organisation, was conducted via the Internet with 1,704 adults taking part.

When he appeared before the foreign affairs committee, Campbell demanded an apology from the BBC, triggering a nasty public row between Downing Street and the public broadcaster.

Blair declined to go before the committee, which presents its report on Monday, but he is to field questions Tuesday during a meeting with the chairmen of all Commons select committees.

To the Observer, he reiterated the vigorous denials made to the cross-party panel by his foreign secretary Jack Straw that the September dossier was doctored to reinforce the case for going to war.

"The idea that that I, or anyone else in my position, frankly would start altering intelligence evidence -- or saying to the intelligence services I am going to insert this -- is absurd," he said.

"You could not make a more serious charge against a prime minister -- that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence evidence that I falsified," he said.

"The charge happens to be wrong. I think everyone now accepts that that charge is wrong."

WAR.WIRE