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London, Thursday, August 26, 2004 [OFF WITH HIS
HEAD] MP tries to
impeach Blair on WMD By Andrew
Sparrow TONY Blair (below) faces
an attempt to impeach him for allegedly misleading
MPs in the approach to the war in Iraq. A Welsh nationalist MP has drawn up a report
detailing the Prime Minister's alleged "high crimes
and misdemeanours" which will form the basis of the
indictment.  Adam Price, the MP for Carmarthen East
and Dinefwr, wants to resurrect Parliament's
ancient impeachment procedure, which has not been
used successfully for almost 200 years, because he
believes Mr Blair acted dishonestly in taking the
country to war. The parliamentary authorities
consider impeachment obsolete and Mr Price's
charges are unlikely to be debated in the Commons.
But the attack on Mr Blair, who returned home
yesterday after his summer holiday, will reopen the
debate about weapons of mass destruction. A report in this week's Spectator
magazine says that Mr Price's impeachment document
will accuse Mr Blair of seriously misleading MPs
and the public about WMD. For example, the Prime Minister told NBC News on
April 3, 2002: "We know that [Saddam
Hussein] has stockpiles of major amounts
of chemical and biological weapons." But, as the Butler inquiry showed, the joint
intelligence committee told him in March 2002 that
intelligence about Iraq's WMD was "sporadic and
patchy" and that Saddam possessed "small stocks of
chemical warfare agent precursors". Mr Price will argue that Mr Blair did not tell
the truth because he had already made a secret
agreement with President George W Bush to
invade Iraq and that that also justified his
impeachment. MPs used to employ impeachment to take action
against a public figure accused of "high crimes and
misdemeanours". After the Commons voted in favour
of impeachment, the accused would be tried by the
House of Lords. The most notable case involved Warren
Hastings, who was impeached in 1787 for
offences in his capacity as governor general of
India. He was acquitted after a trial that lasted
until 1795. Although impeachment survives as a
process in America, where Republicans tried to use
it to force President Bill Clinton out of
office, there has not been an impeachment in
Britain since 1806. A parliamentary committee that considered the
matter recently concluded that "the circumstances
in which impeachment has taken place are now so
remote from the present that the procedure may be
considered obsolete".  
Tony
Blair snubs George Bush's pleas to fly to the US
and pick up Congressional Medal of
Honor
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