100 British MPs
back protest over strikes on Iraq.
Daily Telegraph
March 15, 2002
MORE than 100 MPs have sided with the growing Left-wing opposition to the
prospect of British troops being used in a war between the United States and
Iraq.
The speed with which the campaign has been picking up support is a sign of the
dilemma facing Tony Blair if America attacks Iraq. At least two Labour MPs have
said privately that they would resign the whip and sit as independents if
Britain was drawn into war.
The list of signatories to a motion expressing "deep unease" about Mr Blair's
apparent willingness to support a military strike had reached 107 yesterday
morning, with more expected to be added during the day.
It was made up of 95 Labour MPs, including four ex-ministers, three Liberal
Democrats and all nine Scottish and Welsh nationalist MPs.
Alice Mahon, who has been organising the rebels, said: "The Prime Minister has
failed to make a case for military action. He is unable to answer the growing
number of questions that Labour backbenchers are asking. Briefings by ministers
are pathetic - lightweight statements of belief with no facts. Tony is
seeking to shift the terrain of debate over Iraq away from whether we should
attack to when."
Another rebel, George Galloway, told Radio 4's Today programme: "The opposition
to the proposed American war in the Middle East has crystallised a lot of
nascent opposition to the current drift of policy and management inside the
Parliamentary Labour Party - not hitherto a revolutionary body of men and women.
"For the first time in eight years there was in the tea room the other night
talk amongst people whose names I don't even know, so far from the list of usual
suspects they are, about the urgent need for a reshuffle."
However, Mr Galloway's judgment has been questioned because of his close
contacts with Arab radicals.
His entry in the register of members' interests shows that he has visited Iraq
six times in two years, and has been on 12 other trips abroad funded by the
Miriam Appeal, named after an Iraqi girl whom Mr Galloway brought to Britain for
medical treatment, or by groups opposed to sanctions on Iraq. John Sweeney, a
journalist working for BBC Five Live, unearthed the fact that an Arab from whom
Mr Galloway received thousands of pounds in cash for expenses in the 1990s was
the same man who was named in an American court as the purchaser of a satellite
telephone used by al-Qa'eda in Afghanistan.
Five years ago, Mr Galloway was investigated by the Commons Standards and
Privileges Committee over his financial relationship with Saad Al Fagih, a
London based dissident Saudi politician. During the inquiry Mr Galloway
identified more than £5,000-worth of items on his credit card bill that had been
paid by Mr Fagih.
He said that all were out-of-pocket expenses. He also said that he had been
given £1,800 to hand over to foreign nationals living in political exile in
Britain, but refused to say who they were.
Sir George Downey, then Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, said he had
"no grounds for challenging Mr Galloway's version of events".
Evidence presented at the New York
trial of four Arabs accused of involvement in the bombings showed that the
satellite telephone was shipped to Mr Fagih, whose name appeared on a docket
under the heading "payment portion". Mr Fagih has refused to say why his name
appeared, but he denied having any link with the al-Qa'eda network. He said that
the document had been known to the authorities in London since it was seized in
a police raid three years ago.
When Mr Galloway was asked whether he had second thoughts about accepting money
from Mr Fagih, he replied: "I am not responsible for anyone else's views on
Osama Bin Laden other than my own, which are as I expressed in the House after
September 11, to wit, that I despised him, always had even when the British and
American governments were giving him guns and money and that I considered him an
obscurantist savage. Strong enough?"
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