David Miliband 'did not lose sleep' over Iraq backing

Foreign secretary David defends his decision to back Iraq war at Chilcot inquiry

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Monday, 08, Mar 2010 11:20

By inthenews.co.uk staff.

The foreign secretary David Miliband has today defended his decision to back the Iraq war to the inquiry into the conflict in central London.

Mr Miliband said British leaders did not indulge in "vainglorious boasting" after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and told Sir John Chilcot's panel he was convinced by the reports that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Yesterday parliamentary elections in Iraq were marred by terrorist attacks which are believed to have killed at least 38 people. In March 2003 a US-led coalition launched an invasion of Iraq without a UN resolution backing the action.

Mr Miliband, who was a junior minister at the time of the invasion, said: "The authority of the UN, I think, would have been severely dented if the hypothetical case that you are putting - that we had marched to the top of the hill of pressure and then walked down again without disarming Saddam - then I think that would have been really quite damaging for any of the multilateral aims that we have that need to be pursued through the UN.

"The fact that the argument was made very clearly, notably in this country, that feeble follow-through undermines strong words, I think, is significant."

As foreign secretary since 2007, Mr Miliband was in charge during the final stages of UK military involvement in Iraq and the handover of the south of the country to local and US authorities.

In an interview with the Telegraph newspaper today, he said he had not lost sleep over the decision to go to war: "I don't do sleepless nights, but you don't need the legal query you raise to know there are hard questions to be asked of anyone who supported the war.

"It would be stupid to pretend the balance is all on one side of the ledger. We haven't lost the peace, but a lot of people have lost their lives... It was much easier to win the war than the peace."

Gordon Brown appeared before the inquiry last Friday, and strongly rejected claims he had failed to provide the armed forces with the resources they needed in Iraq when he was chancellor.

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