Former Prime Minister Tony Blair will make his hugely-anticipated appearance before an official inquiry into the Iraq War during the fortnight starting January 25, the inquiry team said on Tuesday.
Such is the demand to see Blair’s appearance that the inquiry will hold a ballot to allocate public seats, while a third of the 60 or so available spaces will be allocated to families of soldiers who died in the war.
Blair, prime minister from a decade from 1997, ordered 45,000 British troops to take part in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, a move critics say was illegal.
He is also accused of deceiving the public over claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
No such weapons were ever found, and in a BBC interview last month Blair said he believed it would still have been right to oust Saddam even if he had known Iraq had no WMDs.
The revelation has added to the desire to hear Blair give evidence to the five man-Iraq Inquiry team which is examining Britain’s role before, during and after the conflict.
“There has been considerable interest from members of the public wanting to know how to get a seat for this particular hearing,” said John Chilcot, a former civil servant who is chairman of the inquiry.
“Given the potential demand, we recognise the importance of providing people with certainty about whether or not they will be able to get into the hearings.”
Blair, now Middle East peace envoy, will spend an entire day answering questions. In his recent interview, he said he understood the opposition to the Iraq war and the anger of some of families of those who were killed.
Chilcot has defended his team from accusations from critics in the media that they had been too soft on witnesses and the inquiry would be a whitewash.
Chilcot has said the inquiry was not a trial but would make criticisms where warranted. Set up last year, the inquiry is seeking to identify the lessons to be learned from the Iraq war.
The probe has heard from senior civil servants and military figures who revealed that Britain had received intelligence in the days before the invasion that Iraq had dismantled its chemical weapons.
An official dossier to justify war in September 2002 said Saddam could launch WMDs within 45 minutes.
Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations also told the inquiry he thought the invasion was of “questionable legitimacy” while other witnesses have criticised a lack of preparation for the post-war reconstruction of Iraq.
Blair’s successor Gordon Brown will not appear until after parliamentary elections due by June so the inquiry remains outside of party politics.(Reuters)
