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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

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> http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=586445<http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=586445>


MPs attempt to impeach Blair over Iraq

The Independent Online Edition

By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent

25 November 2004 

Tony Blair has become the first prime minister in nearly 200 years to face a 
formal attempt at impeachment.

A group of MPs tabled a little-used motion yesterday to trigger an 
investigation into claims that he was guilty of "gross misconduct" in the 
run-up to war in Iraq.

Celebrities critical of the war joined 23 MPs to call for Mr Blair's 
impeachment in a motion calling for a special committee to investigate his 
claims in the months before the invasion. The authors Frederick Forsyth and 
Iain Banks, the actors Susan Wooldridge, Andy de la Tour and Corin Redgrave 
and the musician Brian Eno visited the House of Commons to show their 
support, along with Reg and Sally Keys, whose son Thomas, 20, a soldier, died 
in Iraq last year.

Campaigners hope to secure a Commons debate on impeachment, putting Mr 
Blair's claims about Saddam Hussein's weaponry and the threat he posed under 
further scrutiny.

Signatories to the motion include the former Tory frontbencher Boris Johnson, 
the former Tory ministers Douglas Hogg and John Gummer, Plaid Cymru's 
parliamentary leader, Elfyn Llwyd, Paul Marsden, who defected from Labour to 
the Liberal Democrats, and the Respect MP George Galloway, who was expelled 
from the Labour Party for his comments on Iraq. No Labour backbenchers have 
signed the motion despite claims by campaigners that several have privately 
expressed their support.

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party and one of the 
signatories, said he was optimistic that the Speaker, Michael Martin, would 
grant a debate. "This is no gimmick," he said. "No speaker in history has 
turned down a motion on impeachment for debate. My estimation is that, given 
there are 23 names on the order paper, it will depend entirely on the breadth 
and substance of support. The Speaker is an extremely fair man and I have got 
every confidence in his ability to judge that."

Another backer of the motion, Roger Gale, Tory MP for Thanet North, said: "I 
doubt there's a single person here that doesn't accept that Parliament was 
misled, that the House was told there were weapons of mass destruction when 
there were not and that the UK was 45 minutes from doom when it was not. What 
the committee must establish is whether the Prime Minister knew those things 
were false when he told the House of Commons."

A source said: "If we had said in August that we would have an impeachment 
motion on the order paper, people would have laughed. It's there now and has 
been ruled to be in order. Whatever the Speaker decides it will be 
constitutionally important."