Australia Govt. Fighting Probe Of Pre-War Iraq Intel

by Sonny Inbaraj

Prime Minister John Howard, who attended a welcome-home parade in Sydney June 19 for Australian troops who served in Iraq, said he accepted responsibility for sending the small troop contingent to war.

"I accepted the ultimate responsibility for the decision," he told Channel Seven TV. "I have no regrets. It was the right thing. I will never regret it."

The joint parliamentary committee, set up on Wednesday, will examine the nature and accuracy of pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The two-month inquiry will also determine whether the government presented a complete assessment of the Iraqi threat to the Australian people.

Inquiries have already been instigated by Britain and the United States -- the other two members of the so-called "coalition of the willing" in the war against Iraq.

Opposition Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said the joint parliamentary committee was the best way to find the truth.

"We judged that that was the best way to get to the bottom of this whole question. That is, whether in any way the Howard government exaggerated the intelligence information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in order to advance its political case for going to war," he said.

Rudd said the government had to choose how it would handle the inquiry. "It can choose to minimize itself, that is not cooperate. But I think the Australian people will be asking some fundamental questions about what the government has to hide," he added.

But Howard lashed back and criticized the opposition parties in the Senate as being opportunistic and partisan over the war. "It's too early to be doing that because you haven't given the inspection process a proper opportunity," he told reporters in Sydney.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, writing in the 'Sydney Morning Herald', said he remained convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that it was based on this conviction that Australia joined the United States and Britain in the invasion in April.

"It would be a mistake to draw detailed conclusions about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction at this stage. The former Iraqi regime never cooperated completely with weapons inspectors," he added. "It was this failure that formed the basis of the government's decision to participate in military action," wrote Downer.

One important witness to the parliamentary inquiry will be former Australian intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie, who quit the Office of National Assessment (ONA) over the government's stance on Iraq.

Wilkie is currently on his way to Britain to present evidence to a House of Commons inquiry into allegations that Prime Minister Tony Blair's office embellished a dossier on former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's supposed unconventional arms to justify a war.

Just after he resigned in March, Wilkie told reporters: "I'm convinced a war against Iraq at this time would be wrong. For a start, Iraq does not pose a security threat to the U.S., or to the UK or Australia, or to any other country, at this point in time."

"The bottom line is that this war against Iraq is totally unrelated to the war on terror," he stressed.

The ONA is the intelligence agency that directly advises the prime minister on international issues of importance to Australia. The agency's reports -- covering strategic, political and economic intelligence -- also go to the ministers who are members of cabinet's National Security Committee.

The most important material John Howard saw on Iraq came from ONA.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corp before his departure for Britain, Wilkie said Howard exaggerated intelligence information to mask his real reason for going to war, which the former intelligence analyst said was to support the United States at any cost.

"I don't imagine Howard wants it dragged through the inquiry, the fact that we are relying on garbage-grade intelligence out of the U.S. and UK, and that, the agencies were coming out with a measured assessment and the government was then exaggerating it the way it was doing," he told the ABC.

In a major speech to parliament on Feb. 4, Howard explicitly embraced a British intelligence committee claim that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Africa as proof of its continuing effort to develop nuclear weapons.

U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has since acknowledged that this claim was based on forged documents, and this was known at the time to at least some U.S. intelligence personnel.

But Howard, as recently as last week, told the ABC he remained satisfied with the content of his speech, which had been checked by Australian intelligence officials.

The real unease among analysts, however, relates to the potential misuse of crucial intelligence assessments for political ends.

"There remains a disquieting sense that the true reasons for war were not fully explained," said Hugh White, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "That makes the struggle to gain domestic and international support morally as well as politically perilous," he added.

But the prime minister has an ace up its sleeve, according to an intelligence insider.

"Howard is the most cunning and cynical politician in Australian history and so it will come as no surprise that he will stonewall any Australian inquiry until the fate of the Blair and Bush inquiries are known," he said.

"Thus he will have the choice of portraying himself as either being misled from overseas or giving the convenient 'I received no advice' excuse and blame it on the Office of National Assessments."