Iraq inquiry: war ‘not legitimate’, Sir Jeremy Greenstock tells inquiry

Gordon Rayner,
London Telegraph
Saturday, Nov 28th, 2009

The Iraq war was not “legitimate” because Britain and the US failed to win international support for the 2003 invasion, Sir Jeremy Greenstock has told the official inquiry into the war.

Sir Jeremy, who was Britain’s 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.

He favoured delaying the invasion until October 2003 to give weapons inspectors more time to establish whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

But the determination of the US to invade Iraq in March 2003 was “much too strong” for Britain to influence, he said.

Sir Jeremy told the inquiry panel: “I regarded our invasion of Iraq as legal but of questionable legitimacy, in that it didn’t have the democratically observable backing of the great majority of member states or even, perhaps, of a majority of people inside the UK.

Full article here

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