@@ Public anger as Britain admits it was just another LIE to blame Iran for deaths in Iraq @@
Arash
January 5, 2006
Anger as Britain admits it was wrong to blame Iran for deaths in Iraq
By Kim Sengupta, Ben Russell and Terri Judd
MPs and soldiers' families have demanded an explanation from the Government after a
U-turn over claims that Iran was complicit in the killing of British soldiers in
southern Iraq.
Britain has dropped the charge of Iranian involvement after senior officials had
repeatedly accused the Tehran regime of supplying sophisticated explosive devices to
insurgents. Government officials now acknowledge that there is no evidence, or even
reliable intelligence, connecting the Iranian government to the infra-red triggered
bombs which have killed 10 British soldiers in the past eight months.
The twist comes three months after British officials first made strong assertions,
widely reported in the media, of an Iranian hand in killing British soldiers.
The highly publicized allegations emerged as America was locked in tense
confrontation with Iran over its nuclear policy. It led to a major row and the U.S.
Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, warned Tehran of the consequences of continuing
interference in Iraq.
The allegations had also been confirmed by Tony Bliar at a joint press conference in
Downing Street with Iraq's President Jalal Talabani. Mr. Blair told reporters: "There
is no justification for Iran or any other country interfering in Iraq".
The apparent U-turn last night prompted the mother of a young soldier killed in Iraq
to accuse the Government of making political capital out of her son's death. Private
Phillip Hewett, 21, died alongside 2nd Lieutenant Richard Shearer and Private Leon
Spicer when their patrol was hit by an improvised explosive device at al-Amarah,
north of Basra, last July.
Private Hewett's mother, Sue Smith, 44, said: "They don't like Iran and they are
using this for sympathy towards their attitudes, claiming that they were involved in
the murder of our sons. I had the impression from the moment they made that statement
that it was purely bully-boy tactics against Iran. It makes me really angry. They
should be dealing with the people who killed our sons and not using it as a weapon.
The way I look at it, it was just an excuse for another invasion. They have a
foothold in the Middle East and they want to go further".
Michael Moore, the defence spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "Clumsy
diplomacy can only make the situation in Iraq worse that it already is. There should
be an early statement on Iran's involvement in the insurgency so that Parliament can
assess what the real situation is and how the Government is responding to it".
A former Labor defence minister, Peter Kilfoyle, accused the Bliar government of
following President George Bush's obsession with Iran. "Is this intelligence or is it
propaganda?" he asked. "This is what happened in Iraq. I have a deep, abiding
mistrust of what is put out by the Government and a deep, abiding mistrust of what is
put out by the intelligence services. This is part of an almost unconscious urge to
support whatever the American policy of the moment might be".
British officials claimed that, as well as supplying explosives, Tehran was running
"terror camps" for bombers.
The Iranian government had denied all the charges and subsequently claimed British
involvement in a series of blasts on its territory.
British military and diplomatic officials in London and Iraq will now only say that
the technology of the explosive devices, which has since proliferated in other parts
of Iraq, is similar to that used by the Lebanese Hezbollah group which has strong
ties with Iran and Syria.
Military sources state that, although items for making bombs may have been smuggled
across the porous Iranian border, there is no firm intelligence that the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard, which is close to the government of President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, were the suppliers.
The new position adopted by London contradicts the views of the U.S. and Iraqi
military in Baghdad which maintains that Iran is playing a significant part in
fomenting violence in Iraq through supplying weapons to insurgents.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article336567.ece