Lawyer to Blair: 'Come clean over Iraq'

A senior international lawyer urged the British government yesterday to "come clean" and publish the legal advice it received justifying war in Iraq, amid accusations it was politically manipulated.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's trust ratings plunged over his decision to go to war and his record is under the spotlight again in the run-up to an expected May election.

Philippe Sands, a law professor who works in the same chambers as Mr Blair's barrister wife Cherie, said of the pre-war advice from Attorney General Lord Goldsmith: "You can't help but reach the conclusion that it may have been tainted politically in some way."

"There is certainly enough material there to fuel suspicions and I think it is in the government's best interest now to come clean and put everything out in the public domain," he said. Mr Sands expressed doubts about the advice given by the British government's top lawyer in Lawless World, a new book looking at cases from General Augusto Pinochet's British extradition battle to Guantanamo prisoners that changed the face of international law.

The story has become headline news in Britain after the Guardian newspaper published transcripts of what it said was evidence given in private by Lord Goldsmith to an inquiry headed by Lord Butler into how the government presented its case for war.

According to the transcripts, Lord Goldsmith suggested that a March 2003 parliamentary statement in which he gave legal backing to Britain's participation in the war was "set out" by two close Blair advisers he had met with just four days before.

Lord Goldsmith has dismissed as "nonsense" any suggestions that Mr Blair's office wrote the unequivocal advice backing the case for war.