THE Government’s top military adviser during the Iraq War said yesterday that he had been aware of a debate about the legality of the proposed invasion in March 2003.

But Admiral Sir Michael Boyce (now Lord Boyce of Pimlico), who was the Chief of the Defence Staff, said that he had received an official note from the Attorney-General’s department that stated “unequivocally” that military action would be legal.

Lord Boyce told The Times that he admired Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy legal adviser at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for her “honourable” decision to resign because she disagreed with the Government’s justification for war.

Her letter of resignation, which was published this week, contained a claim that Lord Goldsmith, QC, the Attorney- General, had shared her view until March 7, 2003, that the war would be illegal without a second United Nations resolution. It has provoked renewed calls for the Government to publish all Lord Goldsmith’s advice in the lead-up to the invasion.

Lord Boyce said: “There were equally eminent lawyers who took a different stance from her.”

On his behalf, the legal adviser to the Ministry of Defence wrote to Lord Goldsmith requesting confirmation of the legal justification for military action. This was on March 12, 2003. Lord Boyce said yesterday that he had wanted an “instruction” from the Attorney-General that the war was legal. “I am not a lawyer, I didn’t want legal advice, I wanted an instruction and that’s what I got,” he said.

On March 14 a reply from the Attorney-General’s department was handed to Lord Boyce. It was two lines long and said that if there was a need to go to war, it would be legal. It did not go into details.

Lord Boyce said: “I knew there had been a debate going on — which was quite right. There were pros and cons, because this wasn’t like Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait [in August 1990] or the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands [in 1982].”

But the letter from the Attorney-General left no room for doubt. “It was unequivocal, black and white. There was no hedging at all,” Lord Boyce said. Yesterday as the political row over Ms Wilmshurst’s resignation letter ignited the debate over the legality of the war, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, refused to publish the “paper trail” of legal advice that the Government received before the invasion of Iraq.

He clashed with the Opposition and MPs on his own benches when he was forced to make an emergency statement after the publication of the resignation letter.

Ms Wilmshurst wrote that Lord Goldsmith had changed his view to one in which the war could be legal without a second UN resolution but the opinion would be open to challenge. Finally he declared that the conflict would be legal without any further UN resolution.

The Conservatives said that the letter proved that Lord Goldsmith had changed his legal opinion within ten days. Mr Straw denied the accusation. “You make a wholly tendentious claim based on your reading of Ms Wilmshurst’s letter,” he said.

“You say it showed clearly the Attorney-General had one view on March 7 and a different view later. It showed nothing of the kind. What changed between March 7 and March 17 was that it became very clear that consensus was not possible.”

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