Increasing trade with India

THE euphoria over starting full-scale trade between India and Pakistan, which rose to its peak during the ten-day visit of a 115-member trade delegation from Pakistan, has apparently subsided now.

Earlier Mr Ilyas Bilour, who led the delegation and has been elected president of the Indo-Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry at its third annual session, had spoken of the scope for a 6 billion dollar two-way trade between the two countries. Against that figure, the officially recorded trade between the two countries is only half a billion dollars and non-official trade 1.5 to 2 billion dollars, giving the smugglers an open field. On arrival in India, Bilour, who is a Senator, had said: “Let the politicians focus on their political work and we the businessmen will focus on expanding business” — as if the two could be separated in the peculiar India-Pakistan political context.

He got strong support for raising the volume of trade between the two countries from the Indian foreign minister Yashwant Sinha, who had a detailed meeting with the delegation after prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had met them and blessed their endeavours. In fact, Sinha had come out strongly in favour of a South Asian Union, more like the European Union, and strongly affirmed India’s commitment to that Union. If other countries with political, cultural and other differences could form a union, he wondered why the states of South Asia could not do so? He said that in a globalizing world regional trade is seen as a protective measure against external shocks.

He also said: “We in India have no intention to overwhelm Pakistan’s economy through trade. Our aim is only to have normal trade relationship and promote trade in a manner the people in both countries desire.”

If the six billion dollars are divided between the two countries, the three billion dollar share of Pakistan is equal to 25 per cent of Pakistan’s total exports of 11 billion dollars. In a world of globalizing economy with the textile quotas to be off within 18 months that can be a very attractive chunk for Pakistan.

Members of the Pakistan trade delegation spoke of the need for doing away with visas between the two countries, particularly for traders authorised by the chambers of the two countries. Indians visiting Pakistan following similar exchanges have also urged doing away with the visas to promote greater people-to-people understanding.

Members of our trade delegation complained they were permitted to visit only four cities in India, including Ajmer and the only entry point into India was through Wagha. They wanted far more entry points. And the delegates from the South, Sindh in particular, wanted re-opening of Kokhrapar route. All such demands were based on the assumption that political relations between the two countries are improving and will soon become normal.

But the Pakistan delegation could not give an assurance that India would be given the most favoured nation (MFN) treatment in trade, which as commerce minister Humayun Akhtar, said is the most common treatment between trading nations. That concession is tied up with a settlement of the Kashmir issue or at least earnest discussions on that issue. India is not prepared for that and wants Kashmir to be a part of the composite dialogue with Pakistan in which Kashmir will not be the core issue.

Currently Pakistan allows import of 610 items from India and they are subjected to high tariff which is contrary to the rules of the World Trade Organization. But India has not taken that up with the WTO formally as it has chinks in its trade armour.

Mr Sinha says after eight years and four rounds of SAPTA negotiations intra-SAARC trade forms only 4 per cent of the total trade of South Asia. And the number of products on which preferential tariff has been exchanged with Pakistan in particular is minimal. He says as early as 1997 there was also a decision at the summit level to have a South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) by the year 2000. Only one meeting had taken place thereafter, and efforts continue to delay the process, he complains.

“We are now in the second half of 2003 and not a single meeting has taken place this year on SAFTA despite the Katmandu summit mandate for speeding up the talks to finalize the Framework Treaty,” he says. He maintains that besides the free flow of goods “we should have free flow of investment and services within the SAARC region... We are also prepared to work for reasonable levels of value-addition for all countries in South Asia and for harmonization of tariff.

The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi says that Pakistan remains committed to the SAPTA and SAFTA processes and has fully implemented SAPTA III Preference by placing 78 items on the positive list. The Indian prime minister had recently asked what was the use of a SAARC summit if its decisions could not be carried out, particularly in the economic sector? What is certain is that at the next SAARC summit at Islamabad, India would place greater emphasis on implementing SAARC’s economic decisions, particularly in respect of SAPTA and SAFTA.

While Pakistan is placing greater emphasis on resolution of the political disputes between the two countries, particularly what it regarded as the core dispute of Kashmir, India is trying to attach greater importance to the SAARC decisions on economic co-operation and measures for poverty reduction. By doing that it is trying to secure the support of other SAARC members who want greater economic cooperation in SAARC, particularly in the area of trade because of the approaching end of the textile quota system and reduction in import tariff under the Doha Round of negotiations.

Meanwhile, the normalization of relations between the two countries is taking place at a slow pace. High commissioners have been nominated by both countries and they are taking up their offices. The bus service between Delhi and Lahore has resumed. But the rail and air services have not been restored and Mr Sinha says India was prepared to wait for that instead of hastening Pakistan to do that. The Indian prime minister has agreed to attend the SAARC summit in Islamabad, but not to have a meeting with the Pakistani leaders to discuss bilateral issues.

Delegations of peoples’ representative have been crossing the borders. The visit of a parliamentary delegation from Pakistan has been reciprocated by a delegation from India led by Kuldip Nayar. The large trade delegation from Pakistan is to be followed by a delegation from India, and a separate tea delegation. A girl students delegation from India has been well received in Pakistan. And soon a 20-member women entrepreneurs delegation from India is to visit Pakistan.

India which is the largest tea exporter in the world is seeing the prospects of tea exports to the third largest importer of tea in the world — Pakistan. India last year sold 3.5 million kgs of tea to Pakistan which is just three per cent of its annual imports.

But after the earlier euphoria, Bilour made it clear before he left New Delhi that the desired level of trade could not be achieved without the resolution of all outstanding issues between the two countries. He stressed: “Amicable resolution of all outstanding issues would certainly bolster trade between the two countries.”

India wants cotton yarn and fabrics from Pakistan he says. And as far as the Indo-Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry is concerned it has taken a number of decisions to boost trade between the two countries. And he wants constant interaction between the businessmen on both sides to exert pressure on their officials and have better contacts with buyers on the other side. There is a strong desire on the other side to have better trade relations with Pakistan, he says. But the days when Indian investors may come here and make sizable investments may be far off.

Some businessmen argue that if Pakistan promotes a class of businessmen in India who are really interested in trade with Pakistan and benefit by it, for example, by selling large quantities of tea, they may eventually exert pressure on their government to come to political terms with Pakistan.

The Indian delegations which come here certainly go back with better impressions about Pakistan than they had before their arrival here. The masses have become weary of their hostility to Pakistan and may want to improve their relations with Pakistan.

Economic relations between countries are changing fast. Globalization and WTO are making such changes compulsive. More and more developing countries are seeking to boost their economies through larger exports and regional trade. China is the prime example. We cannot continue “business as usual” and allow political considerations prevail over economic needs or gains.

Trading with a country is not doing a favour to it. We buy only those goods which are cheaper or more competitive in overall terms. When the US traded with Stalinist Russia and Mao Zedong’s China it was not doing a favour to them but serving its own interests.

Many experts hence argue that Pakistan should separate its economic relations with neighbours from its political relations and each should be decided on merit and the national need. If we can promote a lobby in India for more trade with us and thus improve bilateral relations, it is worth trying. The Chinese example provides a model to follow. It has improved its relations with India despite its territorial dispute and has finally convinced it to say that Tibet is a Chinese territory. Now it hopes to assimilate Taiwan peacefully by enabling more and more Taiwanese businessmen invest in China in small and big enterprises.

There are subtle ways of achieving great results after the military means had failed and Taiwan had gone into the US orbit or under US protection. All options should be explored for peaceful settlement of Kashmir. And the Chinese method is certainly one of the best and more enduring.

Bush’s trip to Africa

ILLUSTRATING the maxim that all politics is local, American politicians used to lavish attention during election years on the ‘three I’s’ — Israel, Ireland, and Italy. Today, Israel remains a scared cow, but thanks to demographic changes, Africa and Mexico have replaced Ireland and Italy.

Last week, President George Bush, who is campaigning for re-election, voyaged to Africa on a self-described mission to promote democracy, and combat AIDS, terrorism, and poverty. Before leaving, Bush, whose strong suit is not geography, proclaimed: “Africa is a nation with a lot of diseases.”

Bush’s African trip may win away a few black votes from the Democrats. Bill Clinton made a similar pre-election media safari. But Bush’s trip was aimed more at his missionary-minded, southern Christian fundamentalist core supporters (aka ‘American Taliban’), who have been enflamed by their preachers’ dire warnings that ‘evil’ Islam is devouring sub-Saharan Africa.

The trip was also about securing new, non-Mideastern oil supplies for the power-insatiable US, and opening up the world’s last big, untapped market to US business.

Bush’s promise of $15 billion to combat AIDS in black Africa was a laudable, desperately-needed effort that may help counteract the negative worldwide image of the US that President Bush has fostered.

But once the Great White Father from Washington returns home, Africa’s problems will continue to fester. Liberia, the focus of current attention, is an egregious example. The West African state was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves. The ex-slaves, in a telling comment on human nature, promptly enslaved local tribes, formed a dynasty, and turned the country into a plantation run by Firestone Tyre Company. The ‘American’ oligarchy was overthrown in a bloody 1980 coup by an illiterate soldier, Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe.

Before Doe, the decrepit capitol, Monrovia (named after US President James Monroe), had a whiff of civilization. The demented Doe brought in fellow tribesmen from the stone-age interior, turning Liberia into an even scarier, more wretched place than Idi Amin’s Uganda or Papa Doc’s Haiti. President Ronald Reagan received Doe at the White House, unfortunately referring to him as ‘my very good friend, Chairman Mo.’

Doe was overthrown in 1990 by rebels led by former US-resident Charles Taylor, and forced, while being videotaped, to eat his ears and other body parts. He was then killed. Taylor, who was much smarter than Doe, is blamed for stirring civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Bush has demanded he quit office and may send US troops to Liberia. Unlike the imperial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, US intervention in Liberia would be a true ‘liberation’ and genuine humanitarian mission. Only western troops can bring law and order to anarchic Liberia.

But intervention in Liberia will not begin to address Africa’s many miseries. Africa’s underlying problem, as this writer found covering the continent’s wars, is rotten government, rampant corruption, tribalism, disorder, disease, and a runaway birth rate that gobbles up any scant economic progress.

Oil-rich Nigeria, black Africa’s most populous nation, and Olympic scam champion — ‘hello, I am the daughter of Jonas Savimbi’ or ‘make $30 million from frozen bank accounts,’ is a chaotic mass of corruption, ethnic hatreds, and political chicanery.

Liberia, Sierra Leone and now Ivory Coast are terrorized by gangs of heavily armed teenage thugs crazed on palm beer and potent marijuana. Congo, Africa’s heartland, is being savaged by tribal warfare and plundering neighbours. Rwanda risks new genocide. Zimbabwe and Ethiopia face famine.

The old order, where respected tribal chiefs ruled and administered justice, is breaking down, replaced by corrupt officials, urban gangs, and anarchy. Farmers have been ruined by high western tariffs and surplus foodstuffs dumped on Africa by the Europeans and the US. Governments across the continent are totally addicted to cash handouts from abroad.

Parts of black Africa have regressed economically, politically and socially since independence in the 1960s. Slavery and colonialism left pernicious legacies, to be sure, but the main blame lies with Africans themselves. In the 1980s, UN experts estimated that Angola alone, if properly run and farmed, could easily feed all black Africa. Yet today, after untold billions in aid and endless conferences, Africans continue to starve and suffer.

Attempts by African states and ill-trained UN peacekeeping forces to deal with Africa’s war-torn regions have failed. However, small numbers of troops from former colonial powers — France, Britain and Belgium — have been highly successful in imposing order and driving off armed rabble. Now, sub-Saharan Africa may well be heading towards re-colonization by western powers, a renewed version of what Kipling called “the white man’s burden,” where permanent garrisons of mobile western troops keep the Pax Americana and impose law and order.

Bush made his longest stop in South Africa. Nelson Mandela, the world’s most respected and venerated figure after Pope John Paul II, refused to meet Bush and instead left the country. Both Mandela and the Pope condemned Bush’s war against Iraq in the strongest possible terms. Mandela’s pointed departure was not a proud moment for the US.

Bush’s aides may sneer, as Stalin sneered at the Pope, that Mandela has neither divisions nor billions. True enough. But when old lion Mandela roars, all Africa listens. — Copyright Eric S. Margolis, 2003

Exploiting ‘terror’ climate

THE wars that flared up again last month in the Indonesian province of Aceh and the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines seem to have a lot in common.

Indeed, both Indonesia’s President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo are exploiting the climate created by the US ‘war on terrorism’ to justify their attacks on local separatist movements that call themselves ‘Islamic’. But neither the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) in Indonesia nor the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Philippines are really linked to Al Qaeda, and the two conflicts will probably have quite different outcomes.

“It takes two to tango,” said President Macapagal Arroyo in Davao City on 10 June, demanding that MILF respond to her offer of permanent peace with more than a temporary ceasefire. But the fact that she is following up her military offensive with an extended visit to the troubled island of Mindanao suggests that she is after something more than a mere military victory. She is actually trying to end the war.

Both MILF and its rival in the region, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), embody the resentment of the Muslims of the southern Philippines who have become a minority in their own region due to massive government-sponsored Christian immigration over the past fifty years. MILF is more ‘Islamic’ in tone, but the original break between the two groups was driven by personal rivalries (MILF leader Hashim Selamat was second-in-command of the MNLF until 1979), and current differences are mostly about the peace agreement that MNLF leader Nur Misuari signed with Manila in 1996.

MILF would be withering away by now if Manila had actually carried out the 1996 deal in good faith, but it didn’t. Nur Misuari was elected governor of the new Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, but the deal was sabotaged in Manila by Christian senators and congressmen from Mindanao, who cut funds for implementation of the peace agreement and refused to give the autonomous regional government any taxation authority.

As a result, the Muslims of Mindanao still do not have their own government seven years after the peace agreement — and so popular support has shifted to the hold-outs of MILF who never trusted Manila in the first place. Despite a ceasefire, skirmishes between MILF’s 12,000 fighters and government troops have been escalating since 2000, and a wave of attacks that killed about 100 people in Mindanao in May was the last straw for Macapagal Arroyo’s government.

She also accuses MILF of having had contacts with the Islamist terrorists of Jemaah Islamiyah, the regional affiliate of Al Qaeda, and at some level that may be true. But MILF’s support still comes mainly from moderate Muslims who want to stop the erosion of their community’s political and economic position in Mindanao, and a proper implementation of the autonomy deal would either draw MILF into peaceful politics or cut the ground out from under it.

The fact that MILF has responded to the government’s offensive with a series of unilateral ceasefires and that neighbouring Malaysia is offering to broker peace talks, suggests that this flare-up of fighting is only temporary. It also raises the rather comforting suspicion that both MILF and Macapagal Arroyo are really manoeuvring to outflank the roadblocks thrown up in Congress by Christian politicians from Mindanao and get to a real peace deal. If that’s what they want, they can probably get it.

There is no similar hope of a silver lining in the war clouds over Aceh. Though the rebels of GAM say they want an Islamic state in Aceh, their more important and non-negotiable demand is for an independent state. That is something no government in Jakarta will grant for fear of turning multi-ethnic Indonesia into the next Yugoslavia — and President Sukarnoputri’s government is even less flexible than Macapagal Arroyo’s because she, unlike her Filipino counterpart, is running for re-election next year.

Aceh, on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, has rich gas reserves, but the war is not really about economics. Neither is it about Islamic extremism: though GAM exploits Aceh’s deep Islamic traditions as part of its basically nationalist struggle, it has no links with al-Qaeda and faces an Indonesian government that is also overwhelmingly Muslim. What makes Jakarta so obdurate is the fear that Aceh’s departure, following hard on the independence of East Timor in 1999, would be the signal for every other disgruntled ethnic group in the country to head for the door.

The ceasefire that was signed by GAM five months ago never had a chance, for Jakarta always insisted that the rebels renounce their claim to independence, accept autonomy as the basis for further negotiations, and lay down their weapons. Since GAM was undefeated in battle after 27 years of rebellion and continues to have the sympathy of most of the 4 million Acehnese, there was no reason for it to comply. The return to fighting was inevitable.

Forty-five thousand Indonesian troops have now swept into the province, 300 schools have been burned, and several hundred civilians are already dead, but there is no end in sight because neither side will compromise and neither side can lose. It is perfectly possible to believe that this war will still be going on — though punctuated by ceasefires of varying duration — a full generation from now.

—Copyright

Hazards of peacekeeping

THE crisis in the Congo, and to a lesser extent in Liberia, throws into relief an issue that has long lain at the doorstep of the United Nations — whether or not to authorize the use of an almighty force and a civilian occupying administration.

It is not just the Americans who have shied away from going all the way. At various times countries from all the four corners have given it short shrift. “Peacekeeping” with lightly armed troops was the compromise, which worked well when both sides arrived at the point (often after a lot of fighting) when they wanted a neutral middleman, as in the Middle East or Cyprus (where it averted a Bosnian type Christian/Muslim war), but less well where things were still on the boil, as in the Congo in the early 1960s and Rwanda in 1994.

The question pressed by the widening civil wars in the Congo and Liberia is will the UN membership be prepared to vote for something stronger — an almighty force — perhaps American-led as it was in Korea in 1950, Iraq in 1991 or, on a smaller scale, Australian-led as it was in East Timor in 1998 and British-led as it was in Sierra Leone in 2001? This is not quite how the founding fathers of the UN saw it, but if a big power possesses a fleet-of-foot military machine is not this a proper way to make use of it?

A more robust UN has its dangers — it will inevitably devalue the old time compromise of peacekeeping conceived by former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjvld, a tool fashioned out of necessity when more ambitious plans were necessarily frozen by the imperatives of the Cold War.

Brian Urquhart, who for many years was the head of UN peacekeeping, wrote in his autobiography of many of the tensions in that quite terrifying peace keeping operation that left Urquhart himself beaten unconscious and Hammarskjvld killed in an air crash as they sought to mediate. Many of the soldiers, Urquhart recounts, from Swedes to Indians to Ethiopians wanted to use force. The Swedes at one point even took off to start bombing in retaliation for the murder of an Italian airman, only to be thwarted by bad weather.

Urquhart and his boss, the American Ralph Bunche, gradually persuaded them of the virtue of restraint. “They simply did not want to understand either the principle involved or the bottomless morass into which they would sink if they descended from the high ground of the non-violent international peace keeping force.

The moment the UN starts killing people it becomes part of the conflict it is supposed to be controlling and therefore part of the problem. It loses one quality which distinguishes it from and sets it above people it is dealing with.”

Bold words and a sizable element of truth, as Bunche and Urquhart and their successors demonstrated in a large number of successful and largely forgotten peace keeping interventions — in the Lebanon, in Sinai, in Cyprus and Namibia, in El Salvador and Iran/Iraq, in Cambodia and Macedonia.

Yet even in the Congo the secession of the province of Katanga, a major cause of the civil war, was finally ended when U Thant, Hammarskjold’s successor, in response to a series of attacks on UN soldiers, authorized military action to remove the mercenaries and gendarmes who guarded the secessionist stronghold of Katanga. There was a dose of impatient pragmatism here. Once confronted by the highly professional Indian UN soldiers it took only a couple of days to send them running.

Of course, deploying armed might can be an easy option, a substitute for the long-term grind of preventive action, which many of those who in recent years who argue for “humanitarian intervention” seem to give short shrift to. Nevertheless, there are situations — and the Congo is one and Liberia another — when it is clearly too late for preventive action, and we compelled to conclude that something more heavy handed is immediately needed. — Copyright

Can Tony Blair be trusted?

THERE is much about the Iraq war that is not going to script. ‘Evil dictator’ Saddam Hussein has not been killed or captured. Some Iraqis continue to pledge loyalty to him: even those that do not are hardly cheering their American and British ‘liberators’. Indeed, the toll of American lives since the official end of the war runs into a few dozen. Anti-US protests are growing. The humanitarian relief promised to the Iraqi people has not materialized.

All this is bad enough, but the really big script-change is in the central storyline: weapons of mass destruction. According to the script, Iraq was brimming with these. Hussein would probably use them in the war when his back was against the wall. Even if he didn’t they would be found within days, at most weeks.

Their discovery would vindicate George Bush, Tony Blair and all the other prophets who warned of Iraqi WMD.

The problem, and the reason why the script is now being so dramatically rewritten, is that almost three months after the end of the war, no WMD has been found. No nuclear weapons, no biological agents, no lethal chemicals. The desperate hunt by US and British soldiers, and now by the 300-strong Iraq Survey Team, has drawn a big blank. It increasingly looks as if WMD will never be found in Iraq.

All of which creates something of a problem for British Prime Minister Tony Blair. (The parallel headache for George Bush will have to be covered in a separate article). Blair’s case for war against Iraq was based almost solely on the ‘imminent threat’ posed by Iraqi WMD.

Yes, Saddam was evil and yes, the Iraqi people needed liberation and humanitarian assistance, but the reason for going to war was that Saddam Hussein had WMD and could launch a nuclear attack ‘within 45 minutes’. So pressing was this threat that even waiting a few weeks for UN weapons inspectors to pursue their inquiries could have been fatal.

Clearly, the failure to uncover WMD makes a rather big hole in the British prime minister’s case. How could he have got it so wrong? Did the intelligence agencies provide him inaccurate information?

Or, did his government misuse the information it was given? The former raises serious issues of intelligence reliability, but the latter raises infinitely more serious issues of trust in the government and in the leadership of Tony Blair.

Britain’s case for war against Iraq was laid out in two intelligence dossiers. One was presented to Parliament in September 2002, the other in February 2003. Doubts first arose over the February dossier, after an unheard of academic claimed that sections of it had been plagiarized from his 1991 PhD thesis.

The government was soon forced to admit that, indeed, some of the material had been taken from Dr Al-Marashi’s thesis. But the only mistake it conceded was not citing the source of its information: it stood by the content. Others, though, wondered how strong the government’s case could be if it had to rely on 12-year old information posted on the internet?

The September dossier included the claim that Saddam Hussein’s “military planning allows for some of the weapons of mass destruction to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them”. Bad enough that no WMD has been found, but even more damning was a report by Andrew Gilligan on the BBC’s Today programme. He quoted an unnamed senior intelligence official as saying that the dossier had been ‘sexed up’ by the government.

According to Gilligan’s source, the ‘45 minute’ claim was not included in the first draft, but was only added later by Downing Street against the wishes of the intelligence service.

Gilligan’s allegation sparked a furious row between the government and the BBC. Tony Blair’s special adviser Alistair Campbell demanded retraction and an apology from the BBC. The network stuck to its guns and was partially exonerated by a foreign affairs select committee report which concluded that the ‘45 minute’ claim had been given “undue prominence”. Relations between the two remain very tense.

The BBC’s report was significant because it points, not to intelligence failures, but to the manipulation of intelligence by the government to meet its political objectives. Hans Blix, former UN chief weapons inspector, issued the same damning verdict.

Asked by the Panorama programme if he believed America and Britain had been determined to go to war and read the intelligence accordingly, Blix replied “yes”.

The latest controversy over the use of intelligence concerns the allegation, made by both President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger.

The Americans have now admitted that the documents on which this claim was based were forged, and that it should not have been included in this year’s State of the Union address. Washington has implicitly blamed the British — from where the documents were sourced — for the mistake. Even more damaging, it claimed that it had urged the British not to include the Niger intelligence in their September dossier. London stands by its inclusion on the grounds that it has further corroborating evidence, which it did not share with the US — a claim that truly stretches the bounds of credibility.

Each of these question marks over the intelligence that led to war is damning enough — but taken together they present a picture of a government that knowingly selected, highlighted and even exaggerated evidence that backed its political objectives.

Given that this was a pre-emptive war — to avert a potential threat rather than to deal with an actual threat — the accuracy of the intelligence on which the threat was assessed was crucial. Should that intelligence prove to be faulty or distorted, the threat and hence the whole case for war collapses.

Not that Mr Blair is about to concede he was wrong. Far from it: from the attack on the BBC, to a defiant posture before the foreign affairs select committee, to criticism of its final report — the prime minister is firmly sticking to his guns.

The decision to go to war was correct, the intelligence on which it was based was accurate, the government has not engaged in any distortion or manipulation of intelligence, WMD will be found in Iraq.

As strongly as the prime minister defends and stands by his case, however, there are subtle shifts in the government’s position. All present noted that before the select committee, Tony Blair promised that evidence would be found of WMD ‘programmes’ — significantly different from the original pledge to find WMD. One also hears increasing suggestions that Saddam Hussein shipped his weapons out of the country, or destroyed them before American and British forces could find them.

The notion that a huge arsenal of WMDs could be shipped to Syria without anyone noticing, or that Saddam Hussein would spend his last hours in power destroying the only weapons with which he could have hurt those ousting him from power, defies belief.

Tony Blair’s other strategy is to highlight Saddam Hussein’s record in power: the invasion of Kuwait, defiance of UN resolutions, massacre of Kurds, other human rights abuses. Before answering questions on WMD, Blair stressed to the select committee that removing Saddam Hussein had brought enormous benefits to the Iraqi people. He repeated this point at the recent governance conference in London: “the world is more secure, Iraq is a better place and will be a better place, with Saddam Hussein out of power”.

Putting aside the many cynical eyebrows that could be raised over that claim (which is worse: living under a dictatorship, or living in a power vacuum without law and order or basic services like water and electricity?), the overall justification that Saddam was evil misses the point.

No matter how awful life in Iraq was under Saddam, and no matter what his past record, they were not the reason Tony Blair gave to go to war. To replace WMD at this stage with these arguments amounts to moving the goal posts after a shot has been fired.

The fundamental issue here is not the WMD or Saddam Hussain: the fundamental issue is whether or not Tony Blair (and his government) lied to the British people. Former Prime Minister John Major hit the nail on the head: “Parliament and the public need to trust the word of the government and the intelligence services”.

If that trust and that confidence disappear, the very functioning of the government is thrown into doubt.

This is the question that is increasingly hovering over Tony Blair: can he be trusted? If the answer proves to be no, the logical and inevitable outcome will be the prime minister losing his job. Sobering thought, indeed.