LONDON, Feb 26: Britain’s information watchdog ordered the government on Tuesday to release the minutes of cabinet meetings held in March 2003 which discussed the legal justification for going to war in Iraq.

Release of the documents could embarrass Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose predecessor Tony Blair was accused by critics of glossing over lawyers’ initial reservations about launching the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Blair was US President George W. Bush’s strongest ally in the war, which started on March 20, 2003.

“The public interest in disclosing the cabinet minutes in this particular case outweighs the public interest in withholding the information,” the office of Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, who adjudicates on contested Freedom of Information Act requests, said in a statement.

Thomas was ruling on a request from an unidentified member of the public for the government to release confidential records of two cabinet meetings held between March 7 and March 17, 2003, just days before the conflict began.

Those meetings discussed the legal advice by then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith on the legality of invading Iraq.

In 2005, Channel Four news published what it said was the text of a secret March 7, 2003, opinion by Goldsmith stating that “a court might well conclude” that UN Security Council resolutions did not authorise war without a further resolution.

Just 10 days later, after Britain failed to obtain a new

Security Council resolution, Goldsmith presented the cabinet with a single page “summary” of his advice in which he said conclusively that the war was legal and mentioned no doubts.

EXEMPT FROM DISCLOSURE:The government had refused to release the cabinet minutes, saying they were exempt from disclosure because they dealt with “the formulation of government policy and ministerial communications,” Thomas’s office said.

Thomas overruled those arguments, saying release of the information would allow the public more fully to understand the cabinet’s decisions on the Iraq war.

He backed the government’s request to withhold references in the minutes which the government argued “would be likely to have a detrimental effect on international relations” if made public.

The government’s Cabinet Office said it was considering the ruling. It has the option of appealing to a tribunal.

“The requirements of openness and transparency must be balanced against the proper and effective functioning of government,” the Cabinet Office said.

Former minister Clare Short, who voted in favour of the 2003 invasion of Iraq but then resigned from Blair’s government saying she had been misled into supporting the war, said the cabinet minutes would not reveal anything.

“The decision to go to war wasn’t taken in the cabinet and there weren’t detailed, probing discussions and of course the full legal advice ... was never put to the cabinet,” she told BBC radio, calling for an inquiry on Britain’s decision to go to war in Iraq.

The opposition Liberal Democrats said the government’s secrecy over the Iraq war was steadily being dismantled.

“The case for an independent inquiry into the decision to go to war is only strengthened by these continuing efforts to delay and obstruct those seeking the truth,” the party said.

—Reuters