The drowsy Hay festival has been shaken by two bespectacled academics igniting a rather
too intricate political bomb. Under the guise of a literary interview, Philippe Sands QC and the French ambassador to London, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, have connived to attack Jack Straw’s
evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry.
Straw was adamant that President Chirac was ‘unambiguous, whatever the circumstances’ in his refusal to back a second UN resolution. The Guardian reports that Gourdault-Montagne told the Hay festival:
‘Chirac had made it clear that he meant France could not have supported a new UN resolution at that time since it would have triggered an invasion despite the lack of evidence that Iraq possessed WMD.’
That is itself a misrepresentation of UN resolution 1441. WMD intelligence was irrelevant to the terms of the resolution. The resolution merely set a clear timescale for Saddam Hussein to comply with directives, which he did not.
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