Whatever the Blair administration were doing or saying had to be orchestrated from across the pond, here in the cheney/bush administration, there were no lone wolves prowling or lone hawks flying!
Diplomat rejects Blair claim that France barred UN Iraq vote
29 June 2010 Sir John Holmes, former ambassador to France, said France had wanted to give UN weapons inspectors more time.
UK's former French ambassador Sir John Holmes. Photograph: Afp/AFP/Getty Images
One of Britain's most senior diplomats today contradicted outright claims made by the Blair government to parliament and the public that France had scuppered any chance of UN backing for the invasion of Iraq.
Tony Blair repeatedly blamed Jacques Chirac, the then French president, for the failure to get a second security council resolution – something most senior government lawyers, including at first the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, agreed was needed if the invasion was to be lawful.
The claim was repeated in evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, notably by Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time of the invasion. Straw pointed to a television interview Chirac gave on 10 March 2003, less than two weeks before the invasion.
Straw claimed Chirac had made it clear France would not back a fresh UN resolution "whatever the circumstances". Straw added: "I don't think there was any ambiguity." Asked what his view was of Chirac's intervention, Sir John Holmes, British ambassador to France at the time, replied: "The words are clearly ambiguous." Continued
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