The Government is under mounting pressure to hold an early inquiry into the mistakes made in Iraq as Tony Blair refused to apologise for the chaos engulfing the country.
Heavyweight demands for a wide-ranging investigation came in a five-hour debate in the House of Lords led by the former foreign secretary Lord Hurd of Westwell, who won the backing of several other former cabinet ministers.
Allies of Gordon Brown admit there will be growing pressure on him to announce an immediate inquiry if, as expected, he succeeds Tony Blair as Prime Minister this summer. He faces an agonising dilemma over whether to call one. On the one hand, the move might help him to draw a line under an affair in which Mr Blair was undoubtedly the leading player. On the other, Mr Brown, whatever his private reservations, backed Mr Blair and said during the 2005 general election he would not have acted differently. An inquiry would also keep Iraq in the spotlight, and risk overshadowing Mr Brown's attempt to unveil a fresh domestic agenda.
The Government has hinted that there will be an eventual inquiry - but not while British troops are still in Iraq. Some 5,550 will remain in the Basra area after 1,600 return home in the next few months.
Jack Straw, the Leader of the House, who was foreign secretary, at the time of the 2003 invasion, said an investigation would be held "at the appropriate moment". He told Westminster journalists: "That goes for the whole of the Government, including the Prime Minister as he has made clear, but there is an issue of timing."
Lord Hurd told peers that an investigation by Privy Councillors should be set up before the end of the year. "This should be an inquiry not in anger; some of us are angry but the inquiry should be cool and sober.
"It's not a trial, it's not pointing to impeachment or criminal proceedings," he said. "The aim should be not to punish, but learn."
Lord Hurd argued that British servicemen in Iraq were entitled to an inquiry so that mistakes were identified so they were not repeated. "It is not a rush, but I believe the matter should not be left so long that memories fade and the trail of evidence goes cold."
Another former foreign secretary, Lord Howe of Aberavon, said the decisions taken by America and Britain over Iraq had had "a catastrophic effect", with grave damage done to the standing of Britain, the US, the stability of the Middle East and the world.
Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet secretary who conducted an inquiry into the pre-war intelligence in 2004, accused Mr Blair of being "disingenuous" about it. He said: "The UK intelligence community told him on August 23, 2002, that 'we know little about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons work since late 1988'. The Prime Minister did not tell us that.
"He told Parliament only just over a month later that the picture painted by our intelligence services was extensive, detailed and authoritative. Those words could not have been justified by the material which the intelligence community provided to him."
Mr Blair was unrepentant yesterday. He insisted he bore no responsibility for the "terrible" security situation in Iraq. "I don't think we should be apologising because we're not causing the terrorism," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "It's being caused by internal extremists who are linking up with external extremists. And 80-90 per cent of that violence is in or around Baghdad and it's being caused deliberately in order to stop the government of Iraq - which 12 million people voted for - from functioning."
The Prime Minister denied taking his "eye off the ball" after the invasion. The claim is made in a BBC documentary by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former British envoy in Iraq, who said no one had focused on security in the country. "There was a vacuum from the beginning into which looters, saboteurs, the criminals, the insurgents moved very quickly," he said.
But Mr Blair replied: "There was no way that the Iraqi police force that was there under Saddam [Hussein] was going to be able to keep order in the country properly. They were an instrument of Saddam's dictatorship... I don't accept that we failed in that responsibility."
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
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