Iraq: Trouble at home

In a Hardtalk interview on June 27 Tim Sebastian talks to British member of parliament, Alan Duncan.

Click here to watch the full interview

Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - have again surfaced - not in Iraq itself - but as a subject of heated debate in Britain's House of commons.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's press chief Alastair Campbell has vehemently denied "sexing up" evidence in an important dossier about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

we now find out that most of it was written in Downing Street by Alastair Campbell and his imaginative team of scriptwriters

Alan Duncan

BBC defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan reported last month that a senior British official had told him that the government's first dossier on Iraq's weapons programme had been "sexed up" at Downing Street's request.

Exaggerated claims?

In particular, it was alleged a claim that Downing Street asked for extra prominence to be given to a claim that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological strike within 45 minutes of an order.

The Downing Street communications director was grilled by MPs on the Commons foreign affairs committee investigating whether the UK Government exaggerated the case for invading Iraq.

He demanded that the BBC apologise for what he called the "lie" that he had exaggerated evidence in the government's flagship dossier about Iraq's weapons, which was published last September.

So what did the British government know and when did it know it?

The Conservative position

Alan Duncan is the Conservative opposition's spokesman on foreign affairs.

Why did his party back the war on such flimsy evidence?

Challenged on this he said that his party stood by its original support of the war, "what has emerged this week is that we're very angry with a lot of the stuff we on trust seems to have been abused by the Labour government."

Alastair Campbell has accused the BBC of lying about the Iraq dossier

Asked why he took this evidence on trust he said he still did not question or doubt the intelligence gathered in support of the war.

"What we are questioning is the way the government turned this into propaganda when they presented a document to the House of Commons as if it were an intelligence report approved for publication when we now find out that most of it was written in Downing Street by Alastair Campbell and his imaginative team of scriptwriters."

Mr Ducan was pressed on why his party had not asked the questions they should have asked about the veracity of the intelligence material.

"Our motivation was not to curry favour in Washington. Our motivation was to do what was right in that part of the world.".

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