LONDON: The mothers of British soldiers killed in Iraq have challenged the government's refusal to hold a public inquiry into what they say was an illegal invasion.

Rose Gentle and Beverley Clarke said they were "proud of their sons, who died with honour serving their country". Fusilier Gordon Gentle and Trooper David Clarke were 19 when they were killed.

But the two women were "grieving parents in whose minds there are real questions about the legality of the invasion of Iraq in March

2003", their counsel, Rabinder Singh QC, told the court of appeal.

Crucial to the case, he said, was how the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, came to the view that the invasion was lawful. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned in protest from her post as deputy chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office, and the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, had called the war unlawful, Mr Singh said.

Lord Alexander, a leading QC, had described the government's legal justification for the invasion as "risible". Lord Steyn, a former law lord, echoed the view that the government had been forced to scrape "the bottom of the legal barrel".

The families of the two soldiers "can be forgiven for wondering how it was that the UK government came to be advised that the opposite was the true legal position", Mr Singh told the master of the rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, president of the high court queen's bench division, Sir Igor Judge, and Lord Justice Dyson. The judges have already said the case raised "questions of considerable general importance".

A central issue was the families' demand for an explanation from the government as to how 13 pages of equivocal advice from the attorney general on March 7 2003 was changed within 10 days to one page of unequivocal advice that an invasion would be legal, said Mr Singh.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service