'Peacemakers' Exporting War

The conscious nature of Tony Blair's lies and distortions over Iraq is now clear. Collectors will havetheir favourites. Mine is his statement in parliament on 29 January that "we do know of links between al-Qaedaand Iraq". As the intelligence agencies have repeatedly confirmed, there were no links, and Blair wouldhave known this. Looking back, this lie sought to justify his statement, in October 2001, that there would be"a wider war" against Iraq only if there was "absolute evidence" of its complicity in 11September. Of course, there was no evidence, and Blair must have known that, too.

On 12 March, he told parliament that France "is saying, whatever the circumstances, it will veto aresolution" to invade Iraq. Two days earlier, President Jacques Chirac had said the very opposite: thatif Iraq failed to co-operate with the UN inspectors, "it will be for the Security Council and it alone todecide the right thing [and] war would become inevitable". It was this deception that disillusioned evenClare Short.

Blair's festival of lies has shocked some people: those who still believe that their electedrepresentatives tell the truth. Perhaps they are prepared to tolerate some "fudge", but notdeliberate lies, especially those, such as Blair's, that lead to the criminal killing of thousands of people.

Is he unusual? The great American muckraker I F Stone said: "All governments are liars and nothingthey say should be believed." To which the great Irish muckraker Claud Cockburn added: "Neverbelieve anything until it is officially denied."

They were referring to governments that could not be called to account for their actions, regardless oftheir democratic gloss. The Blair government exemplifies this corruption, which is the "democratictotalitarianism" that Orwell described. It has many institutional forms; the most enduring is the ForeignOffice where, as the Scott inquiry into the arms-to-Iraq scandal was told, there is "a culture oflying".

For almost 20 years, the Foreign Office denied that the Suharto regime in Indonesia was usingBritish-supplied Hawk fighter-bombers (and armoured cars and machine-guns) against defenceless people inillegally occupied East Timor, where a third of the population was wiped out by the Indonesian occupation.These lies were faithfully echoed by journalists. I remember the BBC's Jeremy Paxman saying that even ifBlair's new "ethical" foreign policy had stopped the sale of Hawk aircraft, the presence of theaircraft in East Timor was "not proved", which was precisely the line.

The truth was the opposite; the use of Hawks in East Timor had been proved, over and again, and the ForeignOffice knew this, as Robin Cook was forced to admit in 1999 when a Hawk flew low over the East Timoresecapital in full view of the foreign media.

Most of the lying is conducted at a routine "low level", in letters signed by officials andjunior ministers. I have filled half a filing cabinet with them.

A recent example: two New Statesman readers wrote to their MP following a reference of mine inJanuary to Britain selling chemical weapons to Israel. Nigel Griffiths, minister at the Department of Tradeand Industry, replied that the allegation was "entirely without foundation" and claimed that Britainhad destroyed all its chemical weapons.

What he omitted to say was that chemical weapons technology and capability are still being manufactured inBritain and sold to some 26 countries, including Israel. These are toxic chemical precursors, or TCPs, thesale of which is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention. British sales of TCPs are recorded in thegovernment's Strategic Export Control Annual Report, which is a model of obscurantism. In effect, it hidesthem and other banned or borderline weapons technology.

This was revealed a year ago in the Glasgow Sunday Herald by the investigative journalist NeilMackay ("Britain's chemical bazaar", 9 June 2002). The DTI had admitted to Mackay that the sales ofTCPs had been authorised by the government, even though it was not known what they would be used for. AsMackay pointed out, the Chemical Weapons Convention says the export of TCPs can go ahead only when it is clearthat their ultimate use is not prohibited under the convention. In other words, the British government canlicense TCPs only when it is 100 per cent certain that they will not be weaponised. In any case, Griffiths'sofficials told Mackay that promises about them being for use in agriculture could easily be broken. "Itis impossible to know what happens to them in the stages that come after they leave Britain," said oneofficial.

Professor Julian Perry Robinson of the Science and Technology Policy Research Unit at Sussex University, anexpert on the Chemical Weapons Convention, said a TCP such as dimethyl methylphosphonate could easily beturned into sarin nerve gas. Sarin was the agent used in the 1995 attack on the Tokyo Underground, whichkilled 12 people. "Every single chemical warfare agent can be made from toxic chemical precursors,"he said.

The Blair government has approved the sale of these toxic precursors to regimes that have not even signedthe Chemical Weapons Convention, such as Israel, Libya, Taiwan and Syria. Moreover, it has carried on thistrade while Blair has lied about the "threat" of Iraq's chemical weapons.

This is hardly surprising. Under Blair, Britain has reclaimed its place as the world's second biggestweapons dealer. Britain sells to 50 countries engaged in conflict, including both sides in the India/Pakistanconflict. Last year, when Blair was in the subcontinent playing "peacemaker", he was secretly tyingup a deal with India for the same Hawk fighters that devastated East Timor. He has backed Britain's biggestever and most corrupt arms deal - with the unstable and repressive dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, a birthplaceof al-Qaeda.

Lying about these matters, about war and peace, is not new. Addressing the French public in 1767, Voltairewrote: "Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commitinjustices." It is time we denied them that power.

Courtesy, Znet