Hans Blix on three lessons for the Inquiry
by Chris Ames
Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix has given me a summary of the three lessons that he thinks the Inquiry should learn. This is the gist of what he said in a Sky Television interview on Monday.
# Governments should pay attention to what international inspectors say (a recommendation made already by the Butler commission);
# A government may calculate its engaging in armed intervention but it is hard to foresee how things may develop. (Cf. today Iran);
# Governments should take the UN Charter legal restrictions on the use of force seriously. While the UK did not seek to claim that preventive war was permissible, its justification for joining the armed intervention was thin and unpersuasive. The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, did advise that the UK could rest its case on it, in a secret memo (later leaked) he noted that it might not have been accepted by an international tribunal.