Campbell calls for temporary truce with BBC
Alastair Campbell has written a letter to the BBC calling for a temporary truce in his row with the corporation over the government’s Iraq dossier.
The relationship between the two has been fraught since Mr Campbell accused the BBC of being unwilling to admit it was ‘standing by a story that is simply untrue’ and broadcasting a ‘manifestly inadequate piece of journalism’ over the so called ‘dodgy dossier’.
In the letter to the corporation Mr Campbell said he believes there is little point in the two sides having more exchanges until the select committee investigating the dossier reports back on the issue next week.
Mr Campbell and Jack Straw’s angry appearances before the foreign affairs select committee last week seem to have convinced many MPs that Downing Street should be exonerated.
The Foreign Secretary last week described Downing Street’s decision to plagiarise a second arms dossier from a PhD thesis as a ‘complete Horlicks’, which gave Mr Campbell no choice but to apologise to MPs on that point.
However Mr Campbell claims that reports by the BBC which said that security services were unhappy that intelligence material was used by Tony Blair in a way that ‘exaggerated the threat’ from Iraq were untrue.
The dossier, which was used as justification for the Iraq war, said that Saddam could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of the order being issued.
