By IRNA,
London : The barrister wife of former prime minister Tony Blair provoked controversy Saturday by admitting that it is uncertain whether the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 was legal.
“The one thing I would say, as a lawyer, is that we all know that if there had been a right answer to it in international law terms, don’t you think that would have been clear. It wasn’t clear. It still isn’t clear,” Cheri Booth said.
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Booth admitted that she thought deeply about the war and that there were “different views” about it but insisted she did not want to get involved in the controversy over its legality.
“I was not advising the army and nor was I advising my husband on the law. I really am not going to get involved in a discussion about the legal position of the Iraq war,” she said.
“I am not the person to do that because I am not sufficiently impartial as a lawyer about this because it’s a matter that is of interest to the person that I am closest to in the world,” said Blair’s wife, who is a human rights barrister and a part-time judge.
She argued instead that her husband, who lead Britain into the war, was a “person of integrity and that he was absolutely doing everything he could to avoid a war.”
“If he felt in the end this was the right decision for the country then I – who had not seen the papers – was absolutely convinced that it was too,” Booth said.
The decision to go to war without a second UN security council resolution provoked a huge debate in legal circles, especially as Britain’s former attorney general Lord Goldsmith, changed his mind just before the invasion after warning earlier it could be illegal.