Not Your Sweetie

Cook's anti-war stance wins ovation

Tom Happold
Monday March 17, 2003

Robin Cook was given a standing ovation
by Labour MPs this evening when
he
announced that he would be voting
against an attack on Iraq tomorrow.

The former leader of the Commons
resigned from the government earlier
today because he opposed military action
without UN authorisation. His
resignation statement came after his
successor as foreign secretary,
snip

Mr Cook dismissed the argument that
France's President Chirac had alone
stopped a resolution, saying that to
think that was to "delude ourselves".
Neither Nato, nor the EU, nor the
security council supported Britain and
the
US, he added.

snip
Mr Cook dismissed comparisons with the
present situation and the
intervention in Kosovo. It is because
Britain lacks the support it had then,
he said, that "it was all the more
important to gain support in the security
council".

"Our difficulty in getting support this
time", he argued, is because the
"international community and British
public is not persuaded".

Mr Cook warned that "none of us can
predict the death toll" of war, but
that


He attacked George Bush's administration
for greeting evidence of
disarmament with "consternation",
because it undermines the case for
war.
In reference to Mr Bush's controversial
election victory, Mr Cook claimed
that Britain was only now going to war
"because of some hanging chads in
Florida".