Iraq war not legitimate: British diplomat

LONDON (Agencies) - The Iraq war was not legitimate because Britain and the US failed to win international support for the 2003 invasion, Britains then ambassador to the UN said Friday.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who was Britains ambassador to the United Nations between 1998 and 2003, believed the war was legal under the terms of successive UN resolutions, but did not have democratic backing, he told the Iraq Inquiry.
The British diplomat said the US followed its own military timetable for the 2003 invasion of Iraq rather than allowing diplomacy to run its full course.
It appeared to be preparing for conflict despite British efforts to secure a consensus on action after a UN resolution in November 2002 giving Saddam Hussein a last warning to disarm, Jeremy Greenstock told a public inquiry.
Despite much greater sympathy for the US within the UN following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the administration of then President George W Bush had seemed scarcely interested in building international support, he added.
After UN Security Council resolution 1441 was passed in November 2002, giving Iraq a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations, Britain tried to secure explicit backing for its and the US calls for war.
The UKs attempt to reconstitute a consensus had only a slim prospect of success, made slimmer by the recognition by everyone else following events closely that the US was not proactively supportive of the UKs efforts and seemed to be preparing for conflict whatever the UK decided to do, Greenstock said in a written statement to the Chilcot inquiry.
These 'noises off were decidedly unhelpful to what I was trying to do in New York.
Ultimately, the UN Security Council did not agree a second resolution directly authorising war.
Greenstock told the inquiry in spoken evidence Friday this meant the March 2003 invasion of Iraq was legal but of questionable legitimacy, in that it didnt have the democratically observable backing of the great majority of member states. He had warned he might have to resign if there was no resolution backing military action, his written statement said.
I myself warned the Foreign Office in October that I might have to consider my own position if that was the way things went, said Greenstock, Britains ambassador to the UN between 1998 and 2003.
Jeremy Greenstock told the Iraq war inquiry he did not think UN inspectors had been given enough time before the March 2003 invasion to search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
No such weapons were found after the US-led invasion and overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but Greenstock said he remained convinced Iraq was hiding something. There was a concealment committee established by Iraq and they were very good at it, he added.
He said he believed war would probably still have followed if the US had agreed to delay use of force until October, but that the campaign would have had greater legitimacy.
He said military planners wanted to launch the campaign early enough to avoid fighting during the hot summer months.
In an opening written statement, Greenstock said only Bush was in a position to switch off the planning ahead of the invasion.
The US and the UK had, well before then, decided that the threat from Iraq, which was genuinely perceived as including the potential threat of the use of WMD, could only be terminated either if Saddam Hussein conceded absolutely everything the resolutions demanded or if his regime fell.
If this was to be achieved through a UN route, that had to happen on a US-ordained timing, he added.
He said his Iraqi counterpart Mohammed al-Douri told him on Sept 20 2002 that his country did not possess WMD.